View From the Cellar

• By John Gilman
  Mar/Apr 2012, Issue #38, The 2011 German Vintage: A Very, Very Fine and Much More Laid Back Vintage Follows on the Heels Of the High Wire Act of the 2010ers

  (Dönnhoff Riesling QbA) Subscribe to see review text.

Terry Theise Estate Selections

• By Terry Theise
  2012 German Catalog, 6/1/2012 (link)

  (Dönnhoff Estate Riesling) ($22.00) I recently took delivery of the 2001 Dönnhoffs I’d bought and laid away in a cellar a friend in Germany let me borrow space in. Among them were six bottles of the gutsriesling, and at first I winced; I should have brought them over sooner. I needn’t have worried. In fact, the ‘01 and ‘02 gutsrieslings are drinking like dreams right now. Remember some of the internet silliness about Dönnhoff ’s wines don’t age? Don’t make me laugh. Or rather, don’t make me puke, since laughing is pleasurable. I think these wines show a paradox analogous to the thread-count in linens: the more there are, the smoother it feels. Each of these wines has so much sheer material the result is they feel not soft but caressing. So, as always this is from the porphyry site, Oberhäuser Felsenberg and the gravelly site Oberhäuser Kiegelburg, and so it’s a mini-Grand Cru. It’s another in a string of beauties, barely perceptible sweetness, literally incredible class, and in my opinion the single greatest white wine value in the world. And if you want to, you can age it for twenty years or more. +

RJonWine.com

• By Richard Jennings
  1/23/2012 (link) 89 points

  (Dönnhoff Riesling) Light yellow color; apple, green apple nose; tart green apple, grapefruit, mineral palate; medium-plus finish