Top 10 Riesling Spätlese 2016 - Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018, Germany

Picture: Annette Schiller and Florian Lauer, Weingut Peter Lauer in New York City. See: A German Riesling Feast in New York City: Rieslingfeier 2016, USA

The German Spätlese Rieslings listed below have 4 things in common: They are abnormally low in terms of alcohol, they are noticably sweet in the glass, they are at least at the Spätlese level in terms of the German Wine Law of 1971 and they were made by interrupting the fermentation in the cellar.

The latter is extremely important. Without the intervention of the winemaker, the wines listed would be dry. Such wines are generally labeled fruity-sweet. By contrast, noble sweet wines - Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese and Eiswein - have so much sugar in the grapes at harvest that it is impossible to ferment the must to complete dryness.

In the German Wine Law of 1971 - the fundamental basis for classifying German wine - a Spätlese is defined by the sugar content of the grapes at the point of harvest. The Germans use the Öchsle scale to measure the sweetness of the grapes. Grapes with a certain Öchsle level are classified as Spätlese. They have more sugar in the grapes than Kabinett and less than Auslese. All these wines - Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese - if not stopped by the winemaker, would be trocken/ dry wines: Kabinett trocken, Spätlese trocken and Auslese trocken.

The Kabinett trocken, Spätlese trocken and Auslese trocken concepts are disappearing in Germany as part of the move to a terroir-driven classification of wines. Typically, the predicates Kabinett, Spätlese and Auslese are only being used when the fermentation was interrupted by the winemaker to produce a low-alcohol, sweet-style wine.

These wines are quite unique and have their fans all over the world.

See also:

Normally, Wine is Dry. But there are Many Sweet Wines in the World. How is Sweet Wine Made?
German Spaetlese Wines Can Come in Different Versions. I Have Counted Five.
German Wine Basics: Sugar in the Grape - Alcohol and Sweetness in the Wine
Steffen Christmann (Weingut A. Christmann) and Wilhelm Weil (Weingut Robert Weil) Presented the New Wine Classification of the VDP, Germany

Top 10 Riesling Spätlese 2016 - Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018, Germany

95 Points

2016 Weingut Peter Lauer Schodener Saarfeilser -24- Riesling Spätlese
2016 Hofgut Falkenstein Kettnacher Euchariusberg -14 - Riesling Spätlese
2016 Weingut Franz-Josef Eifel Trittenheimer Apotheke Goldstückchen Riesling Spätlese
2016 Hofgut Falkenstein Kettnacher Euchariusberg -6 - Riesling Spätlese

Weingut Peter Lauer

Pictures: Best Riesling Spätlese: Weingut Peter Lauer Schodener Saarfeilser -24- 2016 (Saar)

94 Points

2016 Weingut Weiser-Künstler Enkirchner Ellergrub Riesling Spätlese
2016 Weingut Peter Jakob Kühn Oestricher Lenchen Riesling Spätlese
2016 Weingut Melsheimer Reiler Mullay-Hofberg Schäf Riesling Spätlese
2016 Weingut Franz-Josef Eifel Trittenheimer Apotheke Alte Reben Riesling Spätlese
2016 Weingut Max Ferdinand Richter Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese
2016 Weingut Kühling-Gillot Niersteiner Pettenthal Riesling Spätlese

Weingut Peter Jakob Kühn

Picture: Christian Schiller and Peter Jakob Kühn in Kiedrich, Rheingau, see: Extraordinary Views of the Rheingau Vineyards - A Spectecular Helicopter Flight over the Rheingau with Rheingau Winemakers, Germany

Picture: Annette Schiller with Peter Jakob Kühn in Berlin

Pictures: One of the Bio-dynamic Stars in Germany: Weingut Peter Jakob Kühn in Östrich, Winkel – Germany-North Wine Tour by ombiasy (2014)

Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018

The Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018 was released on Friday, November 24, 2017. I participated in the presentation of the Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018 in Mainz, Germany. The Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018 is at the same time a new and an old German wine guide.

Picture: Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018

2 days after the publication of the Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018, on Monday, November 27, the Gault Millau WeinGuide Deutschland 2018 was released. The Gault Millau WeinGuide 2018 was published by Zabert + Sandmann, which had aquired the license for the Gault Millau WeinGuide Deutschland in June 2017 from the Christian Verlag. The latter had published the Gault Millau WeinGuide Deutschland for many years.

The Gault MillauWeinGuide Deutschland 2018 was put togather by a newly established team of tasters, all of them highly regarded, led by Editor-in-Chief Britta Wiegelmann. Previously, she was Editor-in-Chief of the Vinum Wine Journal. She took over the position from Joel B. Payne, who had been the Gault Millau WeinGuide Deutschland Editor-in-Chief (earlier with Armin Diel) since it was first published in 1994.

Joel B. Payne - along with his Deputy Carsten S. Henn - stayed with the Christian Verlag, managed to bring on board the Vinum Journal and decided to continue publishing a wine guide under a new name: The Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland was borne.

The Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018 was put togather Joel B. Payne, Editor-in-Chief, and Carsten Henn, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, with the same team that put togather and rated the wines and winemakers of the Gault Millau WeinGuide Deutschland 2017, published 12 months ago. The Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018 looks very much like the Gault Millau WeinGuide Deutschland 2017 except for the color of the cover, which is red and no longer green. Also, the winemakers do not receive 1 to 5 grapes anymore but 1 to 5 stars.

Joel B. Payne made clear that he sees the Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018 as an update of the Gault Millau WeinGuide Deutschland 2017 and in a row with the previous 24 issues of the Gault Millau WeinGuide Deutschland, the production of which he led as Editor-in-Chief. Red is now the new Green, said Joel B. Payne at the presentation of the Vinum Weinguide Deutschland 2018 (which is red), while the cover of the Gault Millau Millau WeinGuide Deutschland has been green during the past 24 years and continues to be green.

Picture: Joel B. Payne Being Interviewed

The Vinum WeinGuide Deutschland 2018 reviews on about 1000 pages more than 12.000 wines of 1000 wineries. Its rating symbol is a star and Germany’s best winemakers are awarded one to five stars. The wines are rated on the 1 to 100 scale.

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“The only guide to German Riesling you’ll ever need to read”

Picture: The Candid Wines Team, with Damien Casten on the right

Chicago-based Damien Casten - co-founder of Candid Wines – posted the below on his wine blog, in which he directs his readers to a posting on schiller-wine. In his words, this posting is “the only guide to German Riesling you’ll ever need to read.”
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The only guide to German Riesling you’ll ever need to read

German Riesling is so easy to drink and to love.

I do both quite often.  Why then is it so darn hard to understand?

We Americans (and many non-Americans I’ve met as well) struggle to know what sort of wine is in a bottle of German Riesling because we don’t understand the cues on the labels.  I grant you that many include umlauts, long hyphenated names, and abbreviations that can be hard to decipher for the uninitiated, but I promise you there is a method to the madness.

If you remember nothing else after reading this post, remember this:

The higher the alcohol, the drier the Riesling.

Most any German Riesling at 13-14% alcohol will taste largely dry, while a bottle at 7-8% will taste something like honey.  At alcohol levels in between, the wine will taste more or less sweet.

If you look first at alcohol, you will have a guide to how sweet the wine is, and you’ve passed Riesling 101.  For advanced studies, I would direct you to the series of videos that we made with Harald Ziegler from Weingut August Zeigler in which he explains every word on a bottle of his 2005 Gimmeldinger-Biengarten Riesling Auslese.  This will help to decipher some of the hyphenated words (town-vineyard, town = Gimmeldingen, vineyard = Biengarten) and explain other complicated bits.

If you really want to dive into the layers and complexities of the labels on German wines, and thus understand the wines themselves, I’d suggest that you bookmark Christian Schiller’s excellent review of the different types of Spaetlese and Auslese wines being made today.  Refer back to Christian’s guide a few times and you will come to understand both what is on the label and what sort of wine is in that bottle of German Riesling that you are about to open. It may be the only guide you’ll ever need to read to understand sweetness levels in German Riesling, but you are likely to have to read it six times.

Damien Casten
July 24, 2012
The only guide to German Riesling you’ll ever need to read.

About Damien

Damien Casten co-founded Candid Wines with Scott Kerrigan in 2005 after living, working, and cooking professionally in France for six years. In France he cooked at La Maison Blanche and the Michelin Three Starred Lucas Carton. On his off days, he traded labor for wine and wine education at what was one of Paris' most remarkable shops, Les Ultra Vins.

Candid Wines is a wine distribution company based in Chicago. Our focus is on small wineries growing sustainable, organic and biodynamic wines. Thanks to the good work of our producers, our wines are featured at Chicago's best restaurants and the area's finest retailers, large and small.

Commis de cuisine (Cook) - Lucas Carton
2002 – 2003 (1 year)
Lucas Carton was at the time a Michelin 3 Star restaurant in Paris. Led by Chef / Owner Allain Senderens.

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The posting on schiller-wine Damien Casten is referring to is:  German Spaetlese Wines Can Come in Different Versions. I Have Counted Five.
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German Spaetlese and Auslese Wines – Dry and Sweet

Germany’s Spaetlese and Auslese wines, translated literally, means selected harvest and late harvest wines. Many consumers associate with these terms sweetness in the wine. This is not correct. Auslese and Spaetlese wines can be sweet, even sugar-sweet, but can also be bone dry.

In the German wine law approach of classifying wines, Auslese and Spaetlese refer to the level of sugar in the grape at the point of harvest. The sugar in the grapes however, disappears during fermentation and turns into alcohol. If you leave it to mother nature, without additional effort of the wine maker, grapes harvested at Auslese and Spaetlese level do not have enough sugar by themselves to produce enough remaining sugar so that the wine is sweet. This is only true for noble-sweet wines Beerenauslese, Trockeneweerebnauslese and Eiswein. If you do not do anything, all the sugar in the grapes harvested at Auslese or Spaetlese level is fermented and disappears. You get a bone dry wine. However, in reality, there are sweet Spaetlese and Auslese wines. How does that happen?

There are two methods used by German winemakers to generate residual sugar in such wine:

First, stopping the fermentation; this is typically done through a skillful manipulation of the fermentation process with sulfur and temperature control. The winemaker needs to follow closely the fermentation process and must make sure that it comes to a stop at the desired level of sugar.

Second, the other technique is to let the wine first fully ferment and then add to the dry and fully fermented wine sterilized grape juice (called in German "Suessreserve"). Here the winemakers lets the wine fully ferment to produce a dry wine and then experiments with different amounts of Suessreserve to achieve the desired level of sweetness in the final product. Ideally, the Suessreserve comes from the same wine. It needs to be sterilized so it does not begin to ferment after it is added to the wine.

Both methods are widely used and perfectly legal. What is not legal is to add sugar to the must, if these wines are sold at the Preadikatswein level, that means as Kabinett, Spaetlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese or Eiswein. Chaptalization is only permitted for wines at QbA level and below. Roughly 60 percent of German wine is accounted for by QBA and lower level wine and thus can be chaptalized and indeed is.

Spaetlese and Auslese wine can be both sweet and dry, which is confusing for the consumer. The sweet Spaetlese and Auselse wines can be low and high in terms of alcohol content. In addition, new concepts of wine classification have been introduced in Germany. The most prominent is the one of the VDP. I have counted the different ways of making a Spaetlese wine and came up with 5 different categories. The same applies to Auslese wines. Here they are:

Grosses Geweachs

Let us start with Grosses Gewaechs wines. This is a concept that the VDP wine makers introduced for their membership a few years ago. Only wines from VDP wine makers, who account for 3 percent of the wine production, can be a Grosses Gewaechs wine . But these are more or less Germany’s top wine makers.

A Grosses Geweachs wine

(1) It is a wine from a top vineyard, a Erste Lage;
(2) is always a fully fermented wine and bone dry;
(3) at the point of harvest, it has to be at the Spaetlese level in terms of the sugar content of the grapes at the point of harvest; often they are at the Auslese level.
(3) is, as a rule, marketed under the QbA (Qualitaetswein) category. One of the implications of this is that they can be chaptalized. Here, chaptalization has nothing to do with the sweetness of the wine; the sole purpose is to add alcohol – this are bone dry wines.

Example: The number 87 of the 2009 Wine Spectator list, which got 93 points: 2007 Wittmann Riesling QbA Trocken, Weingut Wittmann, Rheinhessen

Erstes Gewaechs

For reasons that I have a hard time to follow, the state of Hessen, that means the Rheingau region mainly, did not go along with the Grosses Gewaechs concept and introduced a different concept: Erstes Gewaechs. In terms of quality, there is absolutely no difference between Grosses and Erstes Gewaechs, but in the Rheingau, any wine maker can produce an Erstes Gewaechs wine, supposed, he meets the strict criteria.

Ergo, a Erstes Gewaechs wine, like the Grosses Gewaechs wine is always at least a Spaetlese wine, labeled as a ObA wine and is bone dry.

Example: 2008 Hochheimer Hoelle, Riesling, Erstes Gewaechs, Hochheim, Weingut Schaefer.

Josef Schaefer explained to me that this wine was his first Erstes Gewaechs wine. His Estate is in Hochheime, Rheingau. At harvest, the wine was at Auslese level. It was not chaptalized. See more here.

Spaetlese trocken

This are wines

(1) made from grapes harvested at the Spaetlese level,
(2) were the wine maker decided to make a dry wine and to fully ferment the must so that all the sugar turns into alcohol and no sugar remains in the wine and
(3) which do not fall into the group of Grosses Gewaechs or Erstes Gewaechs wines.

A typical wine of that kind would be for example, a Spaetlese trcken produced by a non-VDP wine maker in say the Pflalz region. These are typically high alcohol dry wines.

Example: Two wines from Weingut Schaefer, Hochheim, Rheingau, which I recently tasted in Frankfurt am Main. See here.

2008 Hochheimer Kirchenstueck, Riesling Spaetlese trocken, a dry Spaetlese with a lot of tropical fruits on the palate and a nice long finish.

2008 Gewuerztraminer Spaetlese trocken; also a dry Spaetlese, but a Gewuerztraminer, which is unusual for the Riesling dominated Rheingau: nice wine with lots of tropical fruit, in particular pineapple.

Sweet Spaetlese with high Alcohol

This are wines

(1) made from grapes harvested at the Spaetlese level and
(2) were the wine maker decided to make a sweet wine using “Suessreserve”. Thus, he would let the wine fully ferment, producing a high alcohol level in the wine. At that point, he would have Spaetlese dry, see above. Then, he would add sterilized juice to find the desired level of sweetness. This cannot be a Grosses Gewaechs or Erstes Gewaechs wine, because they are always dry.

The label typically says Spaetlese, there is no reference to “trocken” and the level of Alcohol would be in the double digit area.

Example: I do not have a lot of sweet wines in my cellar, but I found a good example: 1993 Niersteiner Pettental Auslese, Weingut Heyl zu Herrnsheim, Nierstein, Rheinhessen, has 12 % alcohol and is louscisly-sweet.

Sweet Spaetlese with low Alcohol

This are wines

(1) made from grapes harvested at the Spaetlese level and
(2) were the wine maker decided to make a sweet wine by stopping the fermentation. The effect of stopping the fermentation is that the alcohol content in the wine is low and unfermented sugar remains in the wines. You find these light and sweet wines often in the Mosel valley. This are sweet, low-alcohol wines.

Example: On the three Top 100 lists of the Wine Enthusiast, Dr. Loosen appears with an Auslese from Mosel: Dr. Loosen 2007 Erdener Treppchen Riesling Auslese (Mosel-Saar-Ruwer); $42; 93 points; this is sweet and low alcohol Auslese .

Innovatively Classified Wine

Increasingly, winemakers are moving away from the traditional German wine classification and are introducing new concepts of classification, where the sugar content in the grapes at harvest is only of secondary importance. What is more important is the terroir and the final product in the bottle.

This are wines

(1) made with grapes harvested at Spaetlese level or Auslese, where
(2) the winemaker has abandoned the traditional classification system. This are the young, innovative winemakers, who are often very skeptical regarding the meaningfulness of the tradional wine classification system, where the sugar content of the grapes at the point of harvest is at the center of the system and not the quality of the wine in the bottle. But also well established traditional winemakers have gone this route.

Example: Mirjam Schneider, whose wine I reviewed here, has moved away from the traditional wine classification system and has introduced her own system of quality control. She sells all her wines as QbA, according to the government regulations, and then classifies the wines herself with her own approach.

The Merlot, for example, which I reviewed here, was harvested at 99 degree Oechsle, thus was an Auslese wine, but she markets the wine as five stars Lagenwein and you also find on the label the QbA category. By, the way, this allowed her to add a bit of sugar to the must to reinforce the alcohol content to an amazing 15 percent. A fabulous wine.


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German Wine Basics: How does a sweet German Riesling become sweet?

Picture: Christian G.E. Schiller and Bertram Verch in the Roter Hang (Red Slope) in Nierstein, Rheinhessen

There is a large variety of different types of German Rieslings. They can be dry or sweet and those that are sweet can be sweet for different reasons, reflecting factors before harvesting (the land) or reflecting factors during fermentation in the cellar (the hand). The purpose of this blog is to shed some light on these various factors.

To start, some basics, which are often not well understood, but which are fundamental to the issue: The fermentation of grape must is a complex process in which sugars, naturally present in grape juice, are transformed into alcohol and carbon dioxide by the action of yeasts. The fermentation process stops when the alcohol level in the wine has reached around 13 to 15 percent of the volume. In most cases, all the sugar in the grape is fermented by then and the wine is dry. Thus, all over the world, even in the warmer regions, wine tends to be dry. The main role of sugar in the grapes is to produce alcohol in the wine. At the end of the fermentation, the sugar is gone, converted into alcohol.

But there are exceptions. Germany is one of the countries that is well known for sweet dessert wines. These fine sweet wines are produced either from botrytised grapes or grapes that were harvested during frost, more specifically,

First, the fog in the autumn mornings at German river banks produces a fungal infection, botrytis cineria (noble rot), which removes the water in the grapes and adds a unique flavor to the grape; and

Second, the frost late in the year, which also removes the water in the grapes when the temperatures fall (but does not produce the botrytis taste).

In both cases, the sugar content of the grape is exceptionally high at the time of the harvest and mother nature is unable to ferment all the sugar. Thus, natural sugar remains in the wine and makes the wine sweet. These are the famous sweet dessert wines in Germany: Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese, Eiswein.

But Germany is also known for producing sweet non-dessert wines, ranging from simple and cheap party wines to rich and delicate sweet Spaetlese and Auslese wines. What makes these wines sweet is not the sugar content in the grapes (the land), but the skillful processing of the must by the winemaker in the cellar (the hand). Germany’s Spaetlese and Auslese wines, as well as lower quality wines, have a sugar content in the grapes at harvest that normally is fully fermented, even Spaetlese and Auslese wines. Yet, they are often sweet.

There are two methods used by German winemakers to generate residual sugar in such wine:

First, stopping the fermentation; this is typically done through a skillful manipulation of the fermentation process with sulfur and temperature control. The winemaker needs to follow closely the fermenation process and must make sure that it comes to a stop at the desired level of sugar.

Port wine, which is always sweet, is also made by stopping the fermentation process. But in the case of Port wine, what stops the fermentation process, is the adding of alcohol to the must and both the alcohol and sugar level in the finished wine become high.

Second, the other technique is to let the wine first fully ferment and then add to the dry and fully fermented wine sterilized grape juice (called in German "Suessreserve"). Here the winemakers lets the wine fully ferment to produce a dry wine and then experiments with different amounts of Suessreserve to achieve the desired level of sweetness in the final product. Ideally, the Suessreserve comes from the same wine. It needs to be sterilized so it does not begin to ferment after it is added to the wine.

Thus, any German wine ranging from Tafelwein to Spaetlese/Auslese is dry, unless the winemaker decides otherwise. If he or she does so, he or she can either arrest the fermentation or add Suessreserve. A good indication if a sweet Spaetlese was stopped or not is the level of alcohol. If it is low, the likelihood is large that the wine was made sweet by arresting the fermentation. In recent years, adding Suessreserve has become the preferred method.

German wine makers can also add sugar to the grape must. And they do. This is called chaptalization in neighboring France and widespread there for the whole range of wines. But capitalization does not make the wine sweet. The purpose is to increase the alcohol level in the wine, not the sugar level.

Winemakers in Germany are constrained by the law in terms of the quantity of sugar they can add and in terms of sugar content of the grapes. Only grape juice from grapes with a low sugar content can be enriched within certain limits with the purpose to bring the alcohol level to desired level. Thus, at the Kabinett, Spaetlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese and Eiswein levels, wines are not allowed to be chaptalized. But winemakers at times feel that chaptalisation would benefit a wines at the Kabinett or Spaetlese and they do it, but then have to declassify their wine.

Again, those wines that are chaptalized tend to be dry, notwithstanding the sugar that was added; but it can be made sweet if the winemaker stops the fermentation or adds Suessreserve after fermentation..

I love the whole range of German white wines, in particular Rieslings, depending on the occasion. For foie gras, I get a ultra-sweet Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese; I like my veal breast with cream sauce and a bone-dry Auslese from Rheingau and Chinese Food with a sweet Auslese: and I serve a light, spritzy, off-dry Mosel Qualitaetswein at my summer parties.

This is a revised version of my earlier posting on the i-winereview blog