Community Tasting Note

• forceberry wrote: 92 points

  May 25, 2022 - With the 2015 vintage I was told Gruft was the same thing as GG Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, but only bottled in magnums - yet this wine was served from a standard-sized bottle, so I don't know who to trust! Fermented spontaneously. Aged in old oak barriques. 12,5% alcohol. Tasted blind.
  
  Pale lemony color. Varietally correct nose immediately identifiable as a Riesling with its aromas of ripe citrus fruits and crunchy Granny Smith apple, some peachy tones, a little bit of sour apple candy, light floral notes of white flowers and a hint of nashi pear. The wine is dry, precise and light-to-medium-bodied on the palate with intense flavors of ripe, slightly sweetish citrus fruits, some sour apple candy tones, a little bit of apple peel bitterness, light steely mineral notes, a hint of tangy salinity and a subtly lifted touch of VA. Very high and wonderfully structured acidity. The finish is crisp, long and lively with tangy, precise flavors of saline minerality and tart lemony citrus fruits, some apple peel bitterness, a little bit of stony minerality, light sweeter nuances of peachy stone fruits and a faint lifted hint of VA, bordering on subtly acetic.
  
  A very crisp, intense and still so very youthful GG Riesling. Immensely tasty and very promising. At the moment the wine is still a bit nervy and high-strung, but it shows good potential for future development - I'd let the wine wait for another 5 years, perhaps even more, in order to let it show its best. Terrific stuff with lots of upside.

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4 Comments

• Mr_r commented:

  7/30/22, 9:29 AM - Both the standard and magnum sized bottles of the 2015 Piesporter Goldtröpfchen are the same ’Gruft’ matured in small oak barrels, but for some reason it’s not stated on the label of the standard-sized bottle. From 2016 onwards it says Gruft on the label of the 750 ml bottle as another cadaster-specific GG from the Goldtröpfchen vineyard, called ’Hohlweid’, was introduced. (The Hohlweid is made entirely in stainless steel, but in later years with some whole berries left in for added texture). I suspect the 2015 Gruft magnum came out when there were two different GG:s and the label needed clarification. The 2020 vintage now even states the exact cadaster name - Ober der Gruft - on the back label.

• forceberry commented:

  7/31/22, 3:21 PM - Great data points, thanks R!
  
  So, just to check if I understood; is the specific parcel from where Gruft is harvested officially known as Piesporter Goldtröpfchen "Ober der Gruft", but only as "Gruft" in the front label? And there is now another wine from a different parcel (Piesporter Goldtröpfchen "Hohlweid") in the same vineyard?

• Mr_r commented:

  7/31/22, 11:50 PM - Short answer: yes.
  
  Long answer: The 1971 German wine law prohibited the use on the label of any geographical location narrower than an official vineyard site (e.g. Piesporter Goldtröpfchen). Since 2014 it is allowed to use narrower geographical terms and the 2021 reform of the wine law (which replaces the old law in 2025) expressly allows for the use of narrower geographical terms so long as they are registered in the official cadaster (aka the land register of Germany). The German term for such a site is a ’Gewann’.
  
  However, to make things more complex, the 1971 wine law lumped together several vineyards into one while usually retaining the name of the most well-known one. One such case is the Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, which used to be much smaller until several other vineyards were consolidated into it. One such vineyard that got stuffed into the Goldtröpfchen is the Gruft, which is shown e.g. already on the 1868 Prussian tax map. Another vineyard, the Hohlweid, is marked on the 1906 (fourth edition) of the Prussian tax map.
  
  From a historical standpoint what today are Gewanne can be either a former single vineyard or a sector within a single vineyard. There are also cases where these historical sectors are not in the land register, but they are referenced to in the context of the old tax maps.
  
  It is very common to leave out any prefixes, since they don’t usually carry any information. Examples of these are Zeltinger Sonnenuhr ’Bömer’ (’Im Bömer’), Ürziger Würzgarten ’Kranklei’ (’In der Kranklei’), and Erdener Treppchen ’Herzlei’ (’In der Herzlei’). Sometimes they do carry information, such as Saarburger Rausch ’Auf dem Rausch’ as the long name distinguishes the Gewann from the actual vineyard.
  
  When the front label says ’Gruft’ and the back label says ’Ober der Gruft’ it is the same thing - a historical vineyard that lives on as a Gewann.
  
  However, things are not so simple when it comes to the ’Hohlweid’. It is one historical vineyard, but nowadays two separate Gewanne - ’In der Holhweid’ and ’Unten in der Hohlweid’. As Lehnert-Veit’s current 2018 Piesporter Goldtröpfchen GG Hohlweid does not carry the exact Gewann name, it is not possible to know without asking whether this refers to the historical Hohlweid as a whole or just to either of the current Gewanne.
  
  The approximate locations of each Gewanne can be viewed on the cadaster map of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate here:
  https://maps.rlp.de/?layerIDs=7,172&visibility=true,true&transparency=0,NaN¢er=351192.87790265493,5528127.46188297&zoomlevel=10

• Mr_r commented:

  8/1/22, 7:27 AM - (The Gewann ’Im Bömer’ - perhaps best known from a bottling by Selbach-Oster - lies in the Zeltinger Schloßberg vineyard and not in the Sonnenuhr as I falsely claimed.)

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