2003 Riesling Kiedricher Gräfenberg Beerenauslese

Harvest began here on September 22, the earliest in the history of the estate, which was founded by Wilhelm Weil's great grandfather in 1875. By early October, grapes were being picked for some of the top wines. The ideal soil mixture of stone and clay and the proximity to springs in the Taunus mountains, claims Weil, allowed the foliage of vines in Kiedrich, Hallgarten and Rauenthal to remain green while many vineyards nearer the Rhine were threatened with shutdown. The natural, unadjusted acidity of wines in this collection is significantly above the vintage average, not to mention higher than the levels recorded here in 1959 and 1976. The 2003 Weil collection includes some stunners, although a few wines eventually veer off into territory so stratospherically ripe that it becomes increasingly speculative to predict where bottle aging will take them. (Rudi Wiest) Also recommended: 2003 Riesling Kabinett Trocken (1 star), 2003 Riesling Spatlese Trocken, 2003 Riesling, 2003 Kiedricher Grafenberg Riesling Eiswein.