St. Antony Rotschiefer Riesling QbA, Rheinhessen, Germany

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Entirely from the red slope, the 2021 Riesling Rotschiefer opens with an intense and finely flinty bouquet of ripe, elegant Riesling aromas. Fermented with natural yeasts predominantly in stainless steel, this is a medium-bodied, very elegant, silky textured, refined and saline dry Riesling with crystalline acidity and delicate grip on the finish. This is excellent quality. 70,000 bottles produced. 12% stated alcohol. Screw-cap closure. Tasted at the domaine in August 2022.

The 2019 Riesling Rotschiefer shows an intense yellow color with a greenish shimmer and is pure and intense on the elegant, reductive and flinty nose. This is creamy-textured, very elegant and charming Riesling drinks almost like a Burgundy. It is very well balanced and has a stimulatingly salty and grippy finish. 12% alcohol. Biodynamic. Tasted from AP 20 20 in May 2020.

St Antony's 2016 Riesling Rotschiefer assembles grapes from the red slope in Nierstein. There are ripe and lush but not very precise fruit aromas intertwined with fine scents of wet clay and slate on the nose, as if the grapes were not perfectly selected or at least some percent of botrytised grapes were accepted. On the palate, this is a round, lush and elegant Riesling on the border of off-dry. It has a a good mid-palate structured by fine lively acidity and followed by a stimulatingly salty finish. 11.5% alcohol. Tasted in October 2017.

The more successful of two 2007 vintage blends essayed with seeming profligacy from superb sites, St. Antony’s 2007 Riesling Rotschiefer trocken – combining fruit from Orbel, Oelberg, Pettental, Hipping, and Kranzberg – offers red-slope typical peach, tinged with smoky black tea, Szechwan pepper, and tangerine zest. Subtly glossy in texture and with alkaline, smoky finishing mineral suggestions, it is distinctly more successful than the previous year’s rendition, and should remain enjoyable for at least 3-4 years. As reported in issue 179, magnate Detlev Meyer purchased the St. Antony winery in 2005, and his new team – headed by young Felix Peters – is also responsible for the wines of Freiherr Heyl zu Herrensheim. Future St. Antony wines will not indicate "Weingut" or estate-bottling on their labels, as the authorities determined that the wines of two estates could not be estate-bottled in the same cellar, even though great pains had been taken to separate them physically in the spacious facility. As this was for years a personal favorite source for dry Riesling, I regret having to report that recent wines have neither re-captured the style that prevailed under the former regime at its best nor as yet succeeded in a clear stylistic statement of their own, which hopefully time will bring. The 2007s here – of which the top Rieslings were harvested in the second week of October – are as a group slightly finer than the 2006s, but then, vintage conditions not to mention the 2006s having been harvested by a team assembled at the last minute would have predicted as much. TNo known U.S. importer