The Best of Riesling: My Top 6 Rieslings from the 2023 vintage.

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The Best of Riesling: My Top 6 Rieslings from the 2023 vintage.
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I use this wine key: Forge de Laguiole Ebony
I have used this glass in this Video: NUDE Stem Zero Powerful Red Wine Glass
I have tasted the following wines in this Video:
2023 Clemens Busch Marienburg Fahrlay Terrassen GG Riesling Mosel Saar Ruwer Germany www.wine-searc...
2023 Schäfer-Fröhlich Halenberg GG Riesling Nahe Germany
www.wine-searc...
2023 Robert Weil Gräfenberg GG Riesling Rheingau Germany
www.wine-searc...
2023 Knewitz Steinacker GG Riesling Rheinhessen Germany
www.wine-searc...
2023 Philipp Kuhn Saumagen GG Riesling Pfalz
www.wine-searc...
2023 Zehnthof Theo Luckert Maustal GG Riesling Franken Germany
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The 100 Point Scoring System (from www.robertparker.com):
96-100: An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase and consume.
90 - 95: An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.
80 - 89: A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.
70 - 79: An average wine with little distinction except that it is soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous wine.
60 - 69: A below-average wine containing noticeable deficiencies, such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.
50 - 59: A wine deemed to be unacceptable.
A few weeks ago, I was at the most beautiful Riesling tasting in the world: The Vorpremiere VDP Grosses Gewächs, where most of the best producers show their Grand Crus, or Grosses Gewächs Weine in a three-day tasting.
It is an amazing opportunity for the invited tasters to taste up to 462 wines or, 154 wines per day. While the majority of the wines are Rieslings, there are also Grosses Gewächs Pinots, Silvaner, Chardonnays and Lemberger available to taste.
I focused on the 284 Rieslings and at the end of the tasting my teeth were in a sorry state, but I had selected my 6 favorite Rieslings of the tasting from 6 winegrowing regions.
The VDP - The Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter - is an organization that unites most of the best producers in Germany and during the Vopremiere they give a selected group of tasters access to the most recent Grand Cru - or Grosses Gewächs - releases from their wineries. The tasting happens at the end of August, right before the official release of the GGs on the 1st of September.
Riesling is of course Germany's flagship variety. It is planted on over 24,000 hectares and represents close to one-quarter of all of Germany's vineyards.
Most of the Rieslings in at the Vorpremiere were from the 2023 vintage and I only selected 2023s to give you better insight into what the last vintage has to offer.
Wines of Germany wrote about the 2023 vintage: The 2023 wine year will go down in history as one of the fastest harvests on record. Capricious weather brought extreme drought, which was followed by weeks of heavy rainfall that culminated in an extremely warm late summer. Moreover, most grape varieties ripened almost simultaneously.
This doesn’t sound great, but I was very impressed with the quality of the Rieslings at the tasting. This appears to be a vintage That required careful selection and smart viticultural practices, but the results were quite beautiful.