White peach and yellow plum along with a maritime sense of salinity and alkalinity emerge on the nose of Gies-Duppel’s Muschelkalk-based 2009 Birkweiler Mandelberg Riesling trocken and on the palate this 13.2% alcohol Riesling offers an expansive and silken-textured display of pit fruits tinged with the bitterness of their pits as well as the aforementioned oceanic mingling of minerals and Latakia tobacco-like smokiness. Amplitude and alcohol do not translate to any roughness, heat, or heaviness in this wine’s formidably persistent and saliva-stimulating finish. I would anticipate this proving fascinatingly versatile over the next 5-7 years. Volker Gies – for more about whose vineyards and methods consult my coverage in issue 185 –continues to display impressive talent and is happily receiving increasing recognition inside Germany. Hopefully wider U.S. distribution of this estate’s wines will follow. Like other of the best 2009 vintage Rieslings from Gies’s corner of the southern Pfalz, his harbor highly efficacious acidity and high energy of a sort that can by no means be taken for granted – not even on the Mosel! – in this vintage (and indeed, is almost entirely absent in the Rieslings from further south in Alsace). I have been quite keen on Gies’s Pinot Blancs, but found them (as well as his Pinot Gris) – despite ample ripeness – marginally disappointing from 2009, a circumstance familiar from this vintage in neighboring Alsace.Importer: Tartaglione Fine Wines, San Francisco, CA; tel. (415) 216-3356

Gies-Duppel’s Muschelkalk-based 2008 Birkweiler Mandelberg Riesling trocken (a bottling until this year still labeled “Spatlese”) offers a piquantly smoky, bittersweetly floral, and practically dustily mineral nose. Herbs and apricot kernel infiltrate an oily-textured palate leading to a finish of serious intensity and tenacity if relative austerity. As with this year’s wines from Gies’s immediate neighbors the Wehrheims, this is formidable if not terribly charming or winsome, and while I would personally prefer to drink the Muschelkalk bottling, as this warmed up and took on air, it displayed a more generous juiciness. As with last year’s rendition, this Mandelberg was vinified half in cask with spontaneous fermentation and half in tank with cultured yeasts, and arrived at 13% alcohol. It should remain fresh for at least 5-7 years. For more about Volker Gies’s promising career and estate, consult my coverage in issue 185. His 2008s – which typically received around 6 hours on their skins in the press – were bottled already in March (and indeed, several were sold out by September). Gies indicated that it rained in his part of the Sudliche Weinstrasse for the better part of a week beginning October 27, so that he was glad to have finished picking shortly before that, but as at neighboring Wehrheim, I found this collection of wines on the whole slightly austere when compared with last year’s.Importer: Tartaglione Fine Wines, San Francisco, CA; tel. (415) 216-3356