2016 Riesling Nackenheimer trocken

Caroline Gillot reported having kept peronospora at bay in all of her best sites but suffering significant crop losses in those sites that inform her generic “Qvinterra” bottling. She fielded another impressive collection this year, though not one in which I sensed anything like the stylistic change that I described in my report on the 2016s from sister estate Battenfeld-Spanier. While the same husband-and-wife team of Spanier and Gillot, together with co-cellarmaster Axel Thieme, are responsible for both sets of wine, each is consciously rendered with the intention of establishing a distinct style, and the wines of Kühling-Gillot have long tended toward greater generosity, richness and sensual allure. What’s more, a wine like this year’s Pettenthal Grosses Gewächs offers a delicious demonstration that the perception widespread in Germany – including among growers – of minerality and site-typicity as representing a trade-off with luscious fruit, and concentration a trade-off with alcoholic levity – is pure prejudice. Naturally, if you want to repress fruit for the sake of more obvious, harder-edged mineral expression and emphasize power by favoring high Oechsle, you can do so. And, to be sure, some sites and soils are more conducive to austerely stony underpinnings, not to mention high must weights. But why not have one’s cake and eat it too? And why not thereby display talents unique to German Riesling? Carolin Gillot made a different but related plea in the course of our recent tasting: “Why shouldn’t Grosse Gewächse taste great at bottling? Why should they only taste good after five or six years?” Having just noted that I didn’t find Gillot’s 2016s a departure from her fine 2015 collection does not mean that I consider the two on a qualitative par. On the contrary, just as with the Battenfeld-Spanier bottlings, I find that 2016 conduces to welcome levity and complexity that give it a qualitative edge.

Unfortunately, my tasting of 2016s with Gillot proved to be far from complete. She did not have any 2016 Niersteiner Ölberg Grosses Gewächs to show me, and she omitted to lay in a bottle of her 2016 Niersteiner Pettenthal Kabinett, a wine whose 2015 predecessor I praised and that she characterizes as “Riesling the way we believe it was being rendered a hundred years ago on the Rheinfront, with 10-11% alcohol and only very discreet sweetness.” In addition, there are Spätlesen from both Pettenthal and Rothenberg. I can hardly wait to make up for as many of these deficiencies as possible, but none of the wines in question are available in the US, so that will have to wait until my next visit with Gillot. (For more about this estate, including its recent expansion and stylistic explorations, consult my report on its 2015s.)