From their own grapes and pressed straightaway, 2021 Pinot Noir Rosé GB offers a clear, bright, fresh and delicately aromatic bouquet with red fruit and floral aromas. Light, lush and fresh on the palate, this is an intense but filigreed, grippy, intense and sustainable Pinot Rosé with Riesling freshness and phenolic grip. Excellent. 11.5% stated alcohol. Screw cap. Tasted in July 2022.

From Rüdesheim, Rauenthal and Lorch and destemmed, crushed and macerated for a week, the 2020 Pinot Noir Rouge GB finished fermentation in stainless steel and was racked into large oak vats when all the Rieslings were racked into their bins for 14 months. The wine offers a tart and refreshing cherry bouquet. Juicy, round and intense on the palate, with spicy and tart tannins and actually a robust and straight character, this is an intense, mouth-filling, and juicy red that contains all the grapes normally selected for the rosé, which wasn't produced in 2020. This is a very stimulating and juicy Rheingau Pinot. 13% stated alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted in July 2022.

The 2019 Pinot Noir Rouge GB is a classic, offering a pure, fresh and spicy bouquet with phenolic cherry aromas. Elegant and fresh on the palate, this is an intense, aromatic red with lush and stimulating fruit and a delicate, saline and pure finish. It's a highly stimulating, real Rheingau classic that is for quaffing rather than contemplating. 12% stated alcohol. Screw cap. Tasted in July 2022.

The Breuer entry-level (bilingually-labeled) 2008 Spatburgunder Pinot Noir GB displays its usual delightful combination of tart yet ripe red fruits and broth- and marrow-like meatiness, with brightness and with a clarity that permits nuances of salt, crushed stone, cherry pit, licorice, and spice access to its refreshing finish. There is a bit more textural richness – although the overall impression is athletically lean and bright – than in the corresponding 2007. Enjoy this over the next 2-3 years. At more than 9,000 man hours including the time spent on intensive selection, Heinrich Breuer says this was one of the most labor-intensive and expensive harvests in the estate’s history. “We have 80 parcels in Rudesheim and are very conscientious about checking each one every couple of days to make sure the acidity doesn’t drop too low, to check the must weights, and to deal with any issues that might arise. We were in fact happy to have gotten around a half a gram more acidity at harvest than in the 2007s,” continues Breuer, who says it was really the phenolics and not the quality of acids or levels of sugar that changed while they picked in the course of October. Reports have reached me of the extent to which the top 2008 vintage Rieslings here are said to have became more harmonious and complex in the course of last autumn, so I may well have underestimated them based on my September tastings. But I was already totally disarmed and amazed by the quality of the several best nobly sweet wines, coming as they do from an estate that treats that genre very much as an afterthought (or, more accurately, as a part of pre-harvest provided noble rot is already there) and from a vintage in which so few such wines were essayed nation-wide.Importer: Classical Wines, Seattle WA; tel. (206) 547-0255

The Breuer entry-level 2007 Pinot Noir GB is once again a delight, brimming with bright, tart red currant and red raspberry, tinged with faintly bitter iodine and medicinal herbal concentrate; harboring deep, marrow-like carnal suggestions; and hinting Riesling-like in its finish at wet stone. By contrast – and like many of its predecessors – the 2006 rendition of Breuer’s ostensibly more serious bottling of Pinot Noir started out impressively but finished with a drying spot at least partly engendered by wood. I was extremely curious to see how the normally early-harvesting Heinrich Breuer and Hermann Schmoranz would approach this vintage in which the overwhelming consensus among growers was that the fruit must – despite its remarkable head start – hang late. But by the time I tasted their collection, it was evident that Rudesheim’s slopes were – depending on one’s view – blessed or cursed by having ripened much earlier and more precipitately than nearly any other German Riesling vineyards. That said, the always lean style of dry Breuer Rieslings shaded a bit too far into the green spectrum in some of this year’s renditions, and no members of this collection (including the one bearing that word on its label!) make concessions to charm. The levels of acidity truly are without precedent in the modern history of the estate (2004 came closest in that regard), levels more appropriate to the formidable single-vineyard nobly sweet wines that Breuer has crafted, and which – despite none exceeding 300 half bottles in production – will be sold half in 2009 (alongside the dry single-vineyard wines) and half at some future date. Breuer, incidentally, avows that it is deceptive to point to increasingly early harvests at his or any other top address solely as indications of climate change, because at least for most of the late 20th century, he insists, yields were much higher, thus demanding longer hang-time.Imported by Classical Wines, Seattle WA 206 547 0255