2013 Riesling Saar

Roman Niewodniczanski has over the past decade slowly resurrected a dryish style of riesling that he claims is the true heir to the vaunted tradition of the Saar’s glorious past. In one thing he is absolutely correct: the arbitrary limit of nine grams per liter of residual sugar for dry wines makes no sense for this region at the northern cusp of ripeness in Germany. In 2011, he chose to label his single-vineyard bottlings as Grosses Gewächs because a dry style worked well in that vintage. In 2012, they were a touch sweet. As his best 2013 Rieslings were bottled extremely late, I will only taste them this spring. The new vintage includes, among others, the Pergentsknopp, a parcel of 100-year-old ungrafted vines in the Scharzhofberg vineyard.