What traditional German cooks would call “heaven and earth” scents and flavors of apple and turnip mark the 2008 Gimmeldinger Biengarten Riesling trocken, another Christmann offering of impressive density, and marked by cyanic apple pit bitterness integrated into a refreshing flow of fresh fruit sappiness, but one from which any impression of sweetness – including the psychological – seems to have been rigorously expunged. The same could be said about charm. I would anticipate this being worth following for 4-6 years, although my experience with the aging of Christmann wines between the level of their generic bottling and their Idig Grosses Gewachs is, I confess, extremely limited.
As president of the VDP growers’ association, Steffen Christmann has been in the forefront of regulations for (in theory) simplifying members’ wine labeling and cutting down on the frequency with which single vineyard names and so-called Pradikat terms are utilized. Ironically, his own portfolio is one of those whose winery-internal hierarchy might well confuse anyone who isn’t a cellar door customer with time to carefully read the estate’s price list. Bottlings labeled for their village – not vineyard – of origin but with the initials S.C. serve as the second wines for Christmann’s Grosse Gewachse, while theoretically beneath these are a range of wines still bottled with the names of their single vineyards (and, until 2008, with Pradikat). Beneath those are further village-labeled Rieslings and a generic. In 2008, by no means all of these stylistically uniform and occasionally rather severe wines are especially distinctive in personality from one another; although, no doubt wanting to offer his customers a range of price points up to the increasingly elevated tariff of Grosse Gewachse is a significant motivation for Christmann’s proliferation of tiers and bottlings. Incidentally, Karl-Friedrich Christmann – who showed me the 2008 collection in his son’s absence – concurs in the perception of this vintage as very similar to its predecessor, although I found the tendency toward leanness, brightness, phenolic pungency, and uncompromising dryness that typify Christmann Rieslings to have been magnified this year vis-a-vis last. And last year, unlike this one, there were some nobly sweet wines.
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