Kuhling-Gillot Pettentahl Riesling Grosses Gewachs, Rheinhessen, Germany

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An overtly smoky and crushed stone aura vies with site-typical lemon and peach in the nose of Kuhling-Gillot’s 2011 Niersteiner Pettenthal Riesling Grosses Gewachs; and those characteristics inform a full, firm palate with something like the sense of relative opacity that characterized the corresponding village-level bottling. Here, though, a welcome sense of primary juiciness, accompanied by salivary gland-stimulating brininess extends to an impressively persistent finish. This almost certainly needs more time to reveal its potential, but I think it safe to assume that at least half a dozen years of satisfaction are assured. Carolin Gillot has expanded her acreage in Nierstein, and given what seems to be a dearth of growers from that village who are really on top of their game (Strub very much excepted), Riesling lovers must be grateful that some of Germany’s elite vintners who are based nearby (or, in Keller’s case, not all that nearby) have been taking custody of vineyards on the famous Red Slope, where increasingly many of the traditional landholders have in recent years sold their estates and small growers have shown themselves willing to lease after witnessing the meticulous work of a Gillot with neighboring vines. (Such willingness cannot, sadly, be presumed in the world of European wine. On the contrary, it seems more common for small landholders to resist leasing to outsiders out of misplaced communal pride.) This year’s Gillot Grosse Gewachse finished analytically extremely dry, and remained on their full lees until three days before June bottling. The result is an enhancement of fullness and stuffing, though happily at around 13.5% alcohol they evince no significant heat. (Why Gillot neglected to show me her Nackenheimer Rothenberg Grosses Gewachs, though, I can’t explain, and am remiss for having not redressed that omission.)Imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799

The Kuhling-Gillot 2010 Niersteiner Pettenthal Riesling Grosses Gewachs – which, as mentioned parenthetically in connection with this year’s Oppenheim bottling, incorporates the entire crop of Gillot family holdings in this site, none of it having been deemed to require declassification – is possessed of blazing lemony brightness allied to pungency smokiness the result lean and sharp, albeit too brash and, happily, possessed of too much sheer juiciness and saliva-including salinity to be considered austere! A long, invigorating finish adds citrus pip and iodine almost as if attempting to turn the tide in a bitter, severe direction but, thankfully, not entirely succeeding. It will be interesting to see how this develops in bottle, though I would plan to monitor it closely after the first couple of years. And here is certainly another wine from this estate about which my intuitions suggest it will only prove genuinely synergistic with a relatively narrow range of foods. It would certainly cut through fat, but in the process is likely to seem severe, as would surely happen if there were even the least sense of sweetness to the dish. In Carolin Gillot’s absence I tasted with her ever-insightful father (and one of Rheinhessen’s foremost qualitative pioneers) Roland Gillot, who relates that the estate didn’t begin picking Riesling until October 11, and finished November 3, “by which time,” he insists, “most of our neighbors had already finished their harvests. But in my long experience, if you wait, at some point stable weather will arrive. I’m also convinced from experience that the organically farmed vineyards (like his family’s) have many fewer problems in a difficult year like 2010, when what botrytis we did get was pure,” i.e. as opposed to mingled with Penicillium or engendering acetification. (I tasted neither the latest generic Kuhling-Gillot estate Riesling nor, especially regrettably, a dry Scheurebe, because the latter – in perhaps a good sign for this nowadays generally too little-loved grape – had sold out without remnant by the time of my September visit.)Imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799

The smoky cast of Kuhling-Gillot’s 2009 Niersteiner Pettenthal Riesling Grosses Gewachs is more of the savory, saliva-inducing smoked meat sort than of the more aggressive and acerbic wood smoke variety approached by the corresponding bottlings from Oelberg and Rothenberg. Along with peach, almond and tangerine or kumquat that – like the evocation of smoked meat – are typical of this site, come attractive floral adjuncts. Drastic dryness and crushed stone suggestions render the pithy finish here borderline austere despite its sheer persistence, but the wine’s textural richness and complexity more than make up for any such hindrances, resulting in a Riesling that should merit following for at least the next 5-6 years.Like her husband Oliver Spanier (of Weingut Battenfeld-Spanier), Carolin Gillot – for more about whose estate see in particular my reports in issues 185 and 187 – seems disinclined to tolerates residual sugar in her wines. Whether or not it is for that reason that they elected not to bottle the 28 gram residual sugar successor to the superb Kuhling-Gillot 2008 Gewurztraminer feinherb, I do wish I’d had chance to satisfy my curiosity by sampling that wine from cask. (I missed out also on sampling this year’s Kuhling-Gillot Pinot Gris from bottle.)Imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799