Rich picklings from Riesling royalty here, as we hit you with a stupendous set of wines from three fantastic winegrowers: Gunderloch, Christmann and Dönnhoff. The quality and character on offer among these Grosses Gewächs bottlings will make for tough choices. However, our German friends are practised at the art of selection, triumphing in another extreme vintage with a set of pulsating, memorable whites.
Generally speaking, the rollercoaster season was wet, and slow, then dry, then wet, then warm and frenetically fast. Nothing fazes these smooth operators, though. They count on generations of intimate viticulture and endless reserves of energy to see the fruit of their precise expressions of top VDP-rated vineyards come in just-so.
“The Rieslings are super-crunchy and pristine in 2023,” wrote Anne Krebiehl MW of Christmann. The same commentator was bowled over by arguably Johannes Hasselbach’s best set of wines to date. “The 2023 Rieslings at Gunderloch are exquisite renditions of the Red Slope, packing all that savour and fruit of this Permian escarpment into light-footed yet profound Rieslings,” she wrote. “The wines are stunning.”
That “just” leaves Dönnhoff. Cornelius needed 75% more pickers than in the previous year to keep up the furious pace and meticulous selection of perfect grapes. “Just look at the stunning results that Dönnhoff achieved,” wrote Stuart Pigott of jamessuckling.com, who dished out a couple of maximum scores for the GGs. “That’s a testament to the Dönnhoff team’s dedication.”
