Winemaker Notes
White fruit flavors, crisp, crunchy fleshy fruit aromas, fully ripe. With air the wine gains complexity, leaning towards nectarine and crisp cox-orange apple with a nice dose of salinity in the long finish.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
Based largely on vintage 2016 and on grapes from Ruppertsberg (especially Linsenbusch), this offers a mouthwatering and remarkably Chablis-like evocation of salted, herbed chicken stock and oyster liquor. Walnut and peach kernel piquancy stimulate further on a brightly lemony, buoyant palate. The mousse is admirably fine, the long finish both cheek-pinching and saliva-inducing, irrepressibly juicy and loaded with animal as well as mineral savor. Coming as it does in large part from a relatively sandy and flat Einzellage with only a very modest reputation, I was amazed at both this wine’s strength of personality and its quality. Weingut Dr. Deinhard was strongly associated with sparkling wine from its mid-19th-century inception, and ever since the estate’s 2009 sale, the revival of the name von Winning, and Stephan Attmann’s installation as winemaker, traditional-method sparkling wine from cask-fermented musts has been a very serious part of the estate program. Results keep reaching new levels of finesse.
A term typically reserved for Champagne and Sparkling Wines, non-vintage or simply “NV” on a label indicates a blend of finished wines from different vintages (years of harvest). To make non-vintage Champagne, typically the current year’s harvest (in other words, the current vintage) forms the base of the blend. Finished wines from previous years, called “vins de reserve” are blended in at approximately 10-50% of the total volume in order to achieve the flavor, complexity, body and acidity for the desired house style. A tiny proportion of Champagnes are made from a single vintage.
There are also some very large production still wines that may not claim one particular vintage. This would be at the discretion of the winemaker’s goals for character of the final wine.
This sunny and relatively dry region served for many years as a German tourist mecca and was associated with low cost, cheerful wines. But since the 1980s, it has gained a reputation as one of Germany’s more innovative regions, which has led to increased international demand.