A blend of fruit from Pettenthal and Oelberg (priced accordingly) and not harvested until early November, Gillot’s 2007 Niersteiner Riesling trocken finished spontaneously fermenting with a gram too much residual sugar to qualify as trocken, thus handing her a marketing challenge inside Germany that has resulted in her salting half of the production away for sale in 2010 or 2011. Musk, plum and cherry distillate, and orange zest mingle in the nose. This boasts lovely pit fruit palate ripeness and a satiny texture, finishing with plenty of refreshment, as well as smoky and marzipan nuance. Given how voluminous it is already, the conversion of an additional gram or more of sugar to alcohol would have done this wine no good whatsoever. As is, it represents a classic dry, red-soil Niersteiner – of which there are too few examples around today – that should be worth following for at least 8-10 years. Since taking the reins from her father several years ago, Carolin Gillot has proven to be a dynamo. A showcase modern addition has been made to the beautiful Jugendstil home and cellars in Bodenheim, while vinification – along with a veritable fleet of ancient yet impeccably maintained casks that she and her new husband Oliver Spannier luckily happened-upon in 2007 – has been largely transferred to the cellars of Battenfeld-Spanier in southern Rheinhessen, where the couple are raising their son (soon to be joined by a little brother). All this would of course matter little to readers had not the wines become very good indeed, and following the promising 2006s I tasted, the 2007s and 2008s each mark improvement. This estate’s holdings are in the classic Permian red sandstone of Nierstein’s “Rotem Hang” and the immediately-adjacent and once-famous vineyards of Oppenheim, the Gillot family’s original home base. (Bodenheim’s calcareous sites, too, were once justifiably renowned, but the Gillots have no major holdings there. For an account of the 2007 vintage wines of Battenfeld-Spanier, see elsewhere in this report. The two wineries, incidentally, now have a new legal name in common, which appears in small print on the labels, but can be ignored in descriptive practice.)Imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799
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