Gies-Duppel Riesling Trocken Rotliegendes

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The Gies-Duppel 2009 Riesling trocken Rotliegendes displays an aura of smoked meat, fresh citrus and dusty evocation of crushed stone all typical of its Permian sandstone origins. Tight, bright, snappy, and lip-smackingly saline – like its immediate siblings – this has a glossier feel, silkier texture, and more palpable sense of sheer extract, yet at 12.5% alcohol comes off as handsomely fit and agile. I would plan on enjoying it over the next 4-6 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

From red sandstone immediately adjacent to the parcels from which comes their Buntsandstein (both officially in the Kastanienbusch), Gies-Duppel’s 2008 Riesling trocken Rotliegendes smells of fresh lemon, orange, and oregano; comes to the palate bittersweet and pungent, with a palpable sense of density and a subtly oil slick; and finishes with the lithe, lively, buoyant cast that so often and positively spells 2008. No doubt that the wine harbors only 12% alcohol helps in conveying these impressions. For more about Volker Gies’s promising career and estate, consult my coverage in issue 185. His 2008s – which typically received around 6 hours on their skins in the press – were bottled already in March (and indeed, several were sold out by September). Gies indicated that it rained in his part of the Sudliche Weinstrasse for the better part of a week beginning October 27, so that he was glad to have finished picking shortly before that, but as at neighboring Wehrheim, I found this collection of wines on the whole slightly austere when compared with last year’s.Importer: Tartaglione Fine Wines, San Francisco, CA; tel. (415) 216-3356

From just below where the Buntsandstein is picked – and also officially in the single vineyard Kastanienbusch – Gies-Duppel’s 2007 Riesling trocken Rotliegendes originates in Permian red sandstone of the sort famous from Nierstein and Nackenheim as well as parts of the Nahe. Coincidentally this vintage, the analyses of this and the corresponding Bundsandstein are virtually identical, and Gies comes close to replicating the same vinification, which makes the dramatic difference in personalities that much more striking. Tangerine and peach laced with pungent smokiness in the nose could indeed easily be guessed blind as classic Niersteiner, and the acidity here is milder (although analytically close), leading to a sappy, zesty, smoky, lip-smacking, finish. Volker Gies took over his family’s domaine in 1999, and is relentlessly and successfully pursuing quality and site-specificity while offering (at least, based on ex-cellar pricing) some of the finest values I have tasted in German wine over the past several years. Some potentially exciting new vineyard sites have recently been cleared for planting it is clear that, as impressive as these wines are, there will be much more excitement up ahead. Although it had been in the bottle 18 months when I tasted it last September, Duppel’s well-concentrated but rather awkwardly woody, rough 2005 Pinot Noir represented at that time his current offering. But red wines represented the only disappointment of any sort at this address, and even here there is promise. Like his more famous neighbors Rebholz and Wehrheim, Giess renders a range of site-specific Pinot Blancs.Importer: Tartaglione Fine Wines, San Francisco, CA; tel. (415) 216-3356