A vividly gunpowder green tea pungency on the nose of Gies’s 2009 Scheurebe trocken mingles with fennel pollen, peppermint, and grapefruit zest. Brightly-lit and invigoratingly piquant on a lean but juicy palate, it finishes with its pungent elements nicely enfolded in mouthwatering citrus. This distinctively unorthodox and handsomely lean Scheurebe ought to prove quite versatile over the next several years.Volker Gies – for more about whose vineyards and methods consult my coverage in issue 185 –continues to display impressive talent and is happily receiving increasing recognition inside Germany. Hopefully wider U.S. distribution of this estate’s wines will follow. Like other of the best 2009 vintage Rieslings from Gies’s corner of the southern Pfalz, his harbor highly efficacious acidity and high energy of a sort that can by no means be taken for granted – not even on the Mosel! – in this vintage (and indeed, is almost entirely absent in the Rieslings from further south in Alsace). I have been quite keen on Gies’s Pinot Blancs, but found them (as well as his Pinot Gris) – despite ample ripeness – marginally disappointing from 2009, a circumstance familiar from this vintage in neighboring Alsace.Importer: Tartaglione Fine Wines, San Francisco, CA; tel. (415) 216-3356