A Christmann 2010 Gimmeldinger Biengarten Riesling trocken comes off as faintly warm and diffuse, though expansive and undeniably persistent. Its 13.5% alcohol seems to accentuate piquant notes of fruit pit and citrus rind which, along with a stony undertone, render this Riesling austere despite its fullness. I suspect that it will be best served by 2015.
Steffen Christmann does not attempt to minimize the danger that existed of 2011 reading the difficult path of 2006, or even going the rot-plagued way of 2000, had cool, sunny weather not intervened. “We picked generic Riesling after the Grosse Gewachse,” he reports, “which is the first time that has ever happened. But we saw how must weights were charging upwards in the top sites and we didn’t want to have any 14.5% alcohol wines.” May frosts were not a significant factor here as they were in much of the Mittelhaardt, so that the 2011 crop level was normal. Late-picking (though the mid-October dates for it were only 8-10 days behind recent norms); longer-than-usual skin contact; and longer time on the lees were the approaches Christmann took to temper 2010’s ferocious acids, only his lesser bottlings having been subjected to any (and then double-salt) de-acidification. Concentration from low yields, he notes, made for finished levels of natural alcohol no lower – and in a couple of instances higher – than in 2009. He reports relatively little botrytis, but there was enough to permit (or, depending on one’s perspective, to necessitate – lest alcohol or bitterness in the corresponding dry wines get out of hand) a pair of Auslesen, a genre that has in recent years (by choice) become rare at this address. In both 2010 and 2011, some of the single-vineyard wines were matured entirely in cask; others in a mixture of cask and stainless steel. Christmann notes that his collective stock of ambient yeasts – and he suspects that those coming from his vineyards play a prominent fermentative role – must be abundant and healthy, because all of his 2011s (save, of course, for the Auslesen) finished fermenting by Christmas with at most 4.5 grams of residual sugar.
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