The Kuhling-Gillot 2010 Niersteiner Pettenthal Riesling Grosses Gewachs – which, as mentioned parenthetically in connection with this year’s Oppenheim bottling, incorporates the entire crop of Gillot family holdings in this site, none of it having been deemed to require declassification – is possessed of blazing lemony brightness allied to pungency smokiness the result lean and sharp, albeit too brash and, happily, possessed of too much sheer juiciness and saliva-including salinity to be considered austere! A long, invigorating finish adds citrus pip and iodine almost as if attempting to turn the tide in a bitter, severe direction but, thankfully, not entirely succeeding. It will be interesting to see how this develops in bottle, though I would plan to monitor it closely after the first couple of years. And here is certainly another wine from this estate about which my intuitions suggest it will only prove genuinely synergistic with a relatively narrow range of foods. It would certainly cut through fat, but in the process is likely to seem severe, as would surely happen if there were even the least sense of sweetness to the dish. In Carolin Gillot’s absence I tasted with her ever-insightful father (and one of Rheinhessen’s foremost qualitative pioneers) Roland Gillot, who relates that the estate didn’t begin picking Riesling until October 11, and finished November 3, “by which time,” he insists, “most of our neighbors had already finished their harvests. But in my long experience, if you wait, at some point stable weather will arrive. I’m also convinced from experience that the organically farmed vineyards (like his family’s) have many fewer problems in a difficult year like 2010, when what botrytis we did get was pure,” i.e. as opposed to mingled with Penicillium or engendering acetification. (I tasted neither the latest generic Kuhling-Gillot estate Riesling nor, especially regrettably, a dry Scheurebe, because the latter – in perhaps a good sign for this nowadays generally too little-loved grape – had sold out without remnant by the time of my September visit.)Imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799