Winemaker Notes
The nose is tight and clean, intriguing for its intense coconut scent this year along with savory and exotic aromas like licorice and black olive paste.... The mouthfeel is tart, energetic, and exciting, propelling a cascade of juicy citrus fruits over the tongue in the finale. That quality keeps the wine---which possesses ample material in dense and deep layers---from ever becoming ponderous. It is, in short, a great Pettenthal, destined for long life and profound food pairings.
Professional Ratings
-
Vinous
The 2023 Riesling Niersteiner Pettenthal Grosses Gewächs offers creaminess, peppery lemon balm, ripe red apple crunchiness and intense iron-oxide and petrichor savor, all still wrapped in enticing reductive tones. The palate is smooth and streamlined, moving forward with grace, determination and emollience. Everything here is buffered, but at the core, bright citrus tanginess tingles, edged with mouthwatering saltiness. Beautifully coherent, seamless and flowing, this seems to sink deeper into its red stone nature, leaving a spicy, peppery aftertaste that’s as much informed by fine acidity as by veil-like phenolics. (Bone-dry)
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Pettenthal Nierstein Riesling VDP.GG shows a bright, clear, finely spicy, mineral and complex nose of broken rock. Very elegant and vital as well as delicate on the palate, it has ripe, dense but elegant fruit and stimulating salty acidity on the finish, which has good length. This will be more brilliant in a year or two. Tasted at the Vorpremiere VDP.Grosses Gewächs in Wiesbaden in August 2024.
Riesling possesses a remarkable ability to reflect the character of wherever it is grown while still maintaining its identity. A regal variety of incredible purity and precision, this versatile grape can be just as enjoyable dry or sweet, young or old, still or sparkling and can age longer than nearly any other white variety. Somm Secret—Given how difficult it is to discern the level of sweetness in a Riesling from the label, here are some clues to find the dry ones. First, look for the world “trocken.” (“Halbtrocken” or “feinherb” mean off-dry.) Also a higher abv usually indicates a drier Riesling.
