Rieslingfeier: A Celebration of Germany’s Greatest Wines

David Schildknecht, Vinous critic for Germany and Austria, is a regular at Rieslingfeier , NYC's premier celebration of arguably the most noble of all white grapes . In his write up of the 2017 event, he says: "The most intriguing and exciting tasting opportunities, though, came once again thanks to Rieslings that were not only rare but also unusual. My own contributions included a wine that Terry Theise had encouraged me to ask for when, on my first (1984) German wine tour, I visited grower Peter von Weymarn at his family’s Weingut Freiherr Heyl zu Herrnsheim. Terry opined that the 1974 Niersteiner Brudersberg Spätlese, among the few Rieslings from that year with upper-Prädikat aspirations, represented a high point of its vintage. At ten years of age, it had proven a dazzling representative of von Weymarn’s monopole vineyard and demonstrated Nierstein’s potential for ripening, even in challenging vintages, Riesling with strikingly carnal and floral as well as fruity and mineral characteristics. When (also in 1984) von Weymarn helped me kick off retail sales of Heyl wines in Washington, D.C. with an extensive tasting, we went back to that great Auslese vintage 1975; but the only other time I got to taste the 1974 Brudersberg was on a subsequent visit to Nierstein, when von Weymarn consented to my purchasing the case to share with my customers from which this bottle remained – still firm, lively and complex, though now virtually dry-tasting. I had to reflect on the passage of time and the vicissitudes of viticulture in order to remind myself why a number of those who tasted from it were unfamiliar with the name Freiherr Heyl, much less with the history of that once-renowned estate. And there were again this year wines from estates of which I had never heard. I had been told that, at least until fairly recently, several growers in the notoriously insular but historically important Mosel wine village of Thörnich (whose sensational top slopes are today amalgamated under the Einzellage Ritsch) were still selling older wine. But a 1969 Thörnicher Enggass from K. H. Botzet-Zisch brought by Valerie Masten of Skurnik Wines represented the first such I had ever encountered. Growers with deep cellars delight in bringing to Rieslingfeier not just superb wines from renowned older vintages but also their own share of surprising, bluff-the-taster libations. Egon Müller’s contributions this year included a 1973 Scharzhofberger Riesling Auslese Eiswein whose identity other than as aging Eiswein I would not have guessed in a million years. I caught several of the fascinating 1970s and 1980s Rieslings from veteran Hans-Joseph Becker, wines marked by minimal winemaking but extended cask exposure, and which with rare exceptions he had never attempted to sell in the United States despite having for three decades been sales commissioner and logistics point man for Frank Schoonmaker and subsequently Chateau & Estate Wines. Today, J. B. Becker is among the very few top German estates to field a price list featuring wines of numerous vintages – a couple of dozen, in fact. (For more on this estate, whose wines Bitterolf now imports, see my soon to be published account of this year’s Rieslingfeier seminars, as well as my upcoming report devoted primarily to Rhine Rieslings of vintage 2015.) But it’s a measure of how much excitement has been brought to German Riesling in recent years by “outsiders” like Bremen-born Eva Fricke (who began her career working for Becker) and Swiss Daniel Vollenweider or by lifelong denizens of wine-growing areas who have founded new estates or completely revitalized longstanding ones, that half of the growers represented at this year’s Rieslingfeier could not contribute bottles more than 10 or 15 years old. Their relative youthfulness, though, was more than made up for by their quality and vintage diversity – as well as at times by sheer bottle capacity." --David Schildknecht, Vinous, Rieslingfeier: A Celebration of Germany’s Greatest Wines , July 2017 ************************************************************************************************ This year's event includes a walk around tasting of the 2017s and the Gala Dinner where guests share gems from their cellar. You can check out the full events page and purchase tickets here .