Immortality

Posted on 23 August 2010

I’m spending a week in Germany drinking 2009 Riesling. It’s a great vintage (almost) throughout the country, allying ripeness and good fruit with surprising acidity, and so it’s immense fun to sit down to sessions at some of my favourite estates such as Johannishof in the Rheingau, Van Volxem in the Saar and Selbach-Oster in the Moselle. A large part of my stay is devoted to the Erste Lage Sneak Preview in Wiesbaden where the Grosses Gewächs wines (equivalent to Burgundian grand cru) are shown to the press before their official release on 1st September (for details of this tasting see my post from last year).

But the most memorable of these occasions was a tasting of old vintages organised by the VDP Rheingau association. And when I say old I mean old – we went back as far as 1909! The wines were universally very good and not declining at all. What’s the most surprising is that – this being the theme of the tasting – they were all dry, or trocken.

The longevity of Rhine and Moselle Riesling is a well-known fact but you normally expect the longest-lasting wines to have some sugar in them. Sugar acts as a preservative and so it’s the modern Auslese style that ages best. I would never have expected a bone-dry Riesling to behave as well after 101 years from the harvest as the 1909 Eltviller Taubenberg from Kloster Eberbach. The 1935 Wisselbrunnen Spätlese from Schloss Reinhartshausen had amazing power and fabulous complexity mixing pithy grapefruity zest and café au lait richness. There were other spectacular wines on the tasting including a 1976 Schloss Johannisberg and a duo of younger wines – 1992 and 2002 – from Robert Weil.

The tasting presented 19 vintages spanning from 2007 back to 1909, and it’s no exaggeration to say all wines were balanced with a lot of dimension and presence. It has really changed the way I see the ageworthiness of dry Riesling in Germany. I’ll be putting the delicious 2009s in the cellar now with much more reassurance, to open in 15 or 20 years’ time.

Disclosure

All wines at this tasting were provided by the producers. My accommodation during the Erste Lage Sneak Preview is offered by the VDP.