2008 Morstein Riesling Grosses Gewachs

Wittmann’s 2008 Westhofener Morstein Riesling Grosses Gewachs features ripe peach with lemon and peach kernel throughout, and with an oily richness of texture allied to phenolic hardness as well as to bitter citrus peel, fruit pit, and chalk – all of which reflect precisely his ideals for this wine. But there is more refreshment and levity – surely a function of vintage tendencies – than I usually perceive. A hard-to-describe – perhaps somehow orchid-like – pungent florality emerges inner-mouth as well. This certainly scores high on the scales of intensity and rectitude, as well as severity, and in my tastings of older vintages I find they can become more fascinating but don’t become more generous in personality. Wittmann compares this 2008 with his 2002, a wine today strikingly alkaline, faintly fusil, yet still a bit hard, if admirably incisive. Certainly, though, this 2008 will remain fresh for at least the better part of a decade. On the one hand, relates Philipp Wittmann (who harvested the second half of October) I was very happy that I had such stable musts, so that not much could go wrong. But on the other hand, the acids in the Riesling musts were between nine and ten grams. You had to let the wines ferment slowly, and the acids harmonized nicely assisted by considerable tartrate precipitation, it should be noted. The wines needed longer on the lees, continues Wittmann, and were bottled four weeks later than usual. That none of this year’s Grosse Gewachse reached 13% alcohol, I perceived as a plus, since alcohol has been a source of brusqueness or roughness here on occasion. I’m personally a real fan of filigree, fine texture, remarks Wittmann, but on the other hand, I delight in a fat texture on the palate, and that certainly brings with it a certain youthful hardness phenolically-speaking. (Morstein, he thinks, is especially capable of uniting these virtues.) I continue to find Wittmann’s dry Rieslings impressively concentrated. But in my perception, they usually just won’t flex, give, or in the end stoop to genuinely refreshing, let alone to lightening-up and spreading delight, not even in this vintage for which levity is a byword. I find that situation incongruous since Wittmann’s own personality (like that of his father) is so warm and affable. On the other hand, I find his approach works brilliantly with Silvaner, a grape with an inherent tendency to become flabby and that needs not only tough love in the vineyard but structure and rectitude in the cellar. Then again, mine is presumably a minority opinion – certainly from a typical German standpoint, because Wittmann’s Rieslings are nowadays in huge demand there, with prices to match. Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700