2014 Bechtheimer Geyersberg Riesling trocken

I have not met young Jochen Dreissigacker, whose parents converted their family estate exclusively to viticulture during the 1990s and were in part responsible for its now being 60% Riesling, but his U.S. importer kindly supplied me with samples of 2013s and 2014s. The Dreissigackers’ home village of Bechtheim has a long vititcultural history but enjoyed little 20th-century prestige. The top vineyard there is the Geyersberg, not to be confused with the eponymous site farmed in nearby Dittelsheim whose name is often--though not by its best-known exponent, Stefan Winter--spelled with an “i” rather than a “y.”

To a significant degree, the vineyards of Westhofen immediately west of Bechtheim, having acquired notoriety thanks to the work of Keller and Wittmann, are those on which Dreissigacker has staked his claim for international attention. This estate began its transition to an organic viticultural regimen early in the new millennium after Jochen Dreissigacker officially entered his family’s business. His older brother Christian, in a reversal of time-honored tradition, left to take over the neighboring Weingut Dr. Koehler, whose wines I have not tasted.

Dreissigacker prides himself on his vineyards’ low yields, and I suspect that these as well as his harvest habits and pre-fermentation maceration of fruit may share responsibility for wines with sometimes rather strident phenolics and austere expressions of calcareous soil. But anyone familiar with those growers who are numbered domestically among the Wonnegau sector’s great hopes has to conclude that these characteristics evidently suit contemporary German taste. I much preferred Dreissigacker’s 2014s to his 2013s that I tasted, since greater levity, more prominent primary juiciness and a less bulky sense of extract assuaged tendencies toward austerity. Not being familiar with older examples of Dreissigacker’s work, I offer very conservative prognoses of bottle evolution, preferring not to jump to any conclusions about whether these wines might gain nuance or generosity in bottle. Since Dreissigacker is not a VDP member, he does not label his wines as “Grosses Gewächs.” But taking one of that organization’s fashions a step further, he labels every one of his single-vineyard bottlings prominently and solely for the relevant vineyard, whose villages of origin I have nonetheless indicated as part of each wine’s description.