2022 Riesling Niersteiner Hipping Grosses Gewächs

Carolin Spanier-Gillot (née Gillot)’s older brother did not want to take over the family estate, but she knew as a teenager that she wanted to make wine. Her parents had set the course for quality when they started assembling a portfolio of sites on the prestigious Roter Hang, or Red Slope, an escarpment of Permian red sandstone or rhyolite known in German as Rotliegendes, facing the Rhine River. She studied in Geisenheim and did internships in Australia and Burgundy before taking over at home in 2002 when the estate had seven hectares of vineyards. There are 25 hectares today, including Niersteiner Pettenthal, Hipping and Ölberg, Nackenheimer Rothenberg and Oppenheimer Kreuz. Since 2004, the wines have been made by Carolin Spanier-Gillot’s husband, Hans Oliver Spanier of Weingut Battenfeld-Spanier in Hohen-Sülzen. Spanier looks after vineyards and cellars for both estates, which are run together but as separate brands, while Spanier-Gillot is in charge of the business side. The Kühling Gillot vineyards have been farmed organically since 2004 and are certified as such. Biodynamic measures have also been employed since 2005. A key element the couple pioneered in 2005 in the Red Slope is to bring out straw into the vineyards between the rows. This shades the soil, helps to retain water and prevents erosion on the steep slopes – and as the straw slowly rots, it enriches the topsoil. In the stony soils of the Red Slope, ground temperatures can reach up to 70°C on the hottest days. Straw cover means ground temperature does not rise above 40°C – a significant difference. The practice was inspired by the hot summer of 2003 – by now, the practice has been widely accepted across the Red Slope. The heat of 2022 meant that straw was applied twice, despite also representing a fire risk. De-leafing of the fruiting zone happens before flowering to encourage millerandage for looser bunches. All the wines are made in the naturally cool underground cellar of the Battenfeld-Spanier estate in Hohen-Sülzen – see the notes for this estate for more information – in the same way. Spanier-Gillot emphasizes that the differences in the wines – treated in the same fashion in the same cellar with the same yeast populations – are thus down entirely to site and soil – rhyolite for Kühling-Gillot, limestone for Battenfeld-Spanier. While the Rieslings from the Red Slope express that soil’s particular savoriness with aplomb, there also is an ambition for Pinot Noir – which here has a more brooding, darker style and is grown on the richer soils of the plateau rather than in the Red Slope. The Oppenheimer Kreuz site, for instance, was one of the first in Germany to be grafted over alongside the vineyards of Bernhard Huber in Baden to the Burgundian clone 667 back in 1996. (At the time, it was believed that Germany was too cool for grafting over in the vineyard – but the practice has gained immense ground since.)