25 vintages estate Riesling

In case of the Robert Weil estate, most wine journalists agree: it is one of the best Riesling producers in Germany. The foundation for its rise to become one of the most internationally renowned wineries began in 1867, when Dr. Robert Weil acquired vineyard property in the Kiedrich Berg. With the start of the Franco-German War in 1870, Weil gave up his professorship at the Sorbonne in Paris and moved his residence to Kiedrich. There, in 1875, he bought the villa of the late English art patron Sir John Sutton, which is still the ancestral home of the estate.

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In addition to his new job as a journalist, he expanded his vineyard holdings in the Kiedrich Berg, especially in what is now known as the Gräfenberg, which was mentioned as early as the 12^th century as Mons Rhingravi and in 1258 as Grevenberg. From 1907 onwards, the winery was a member of the Vereinigung Rheingauer Weingutsbesitzer, which in 1910 merged into the Verband Deutscher Naturweinversteigerer, today's Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter. The Rieslings quickly found buyers all over the world. Numerous royal houses were on the customer list, as was the Adlon Hotel in Berlin. On the maiden voyage of the transport airship LZ 127 “Graf Zeppelin” a 1920 Kiedrich Gräfenberg Trockenbeerenauslese Bestes Fass Nr. 20 was offered to the travellers in the wine list.

Wilhelm Weil, who is now running the company in the fourth generation, shone again and again in the 1990s with impressive sweet wines. The dry Rieslings seemed to be noticed rather marginally. In recent years, however, the picture has changed significantly. The focus is now no longer only on the high predicates; the Großes Gewächs from the Kiedrich Gräfenberg in particular is beyond reproach.

However, there was and is not only praise in the wine scene. Especially in the area of litre wines and estate Rieslings, there is always criticism of fillings that do not meet the high standards of the house. An on-site tasting in August 2018, however, impressively showed what top performances the winery is capable of.

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Under the motto “Once in a Lifetime”, Wilhelm Weil invited representatives of the relevant print and online media to a blind tasting of 25 vintages of a dry Riesling. Which wine it was remained open. Wilhelm Weil emphasised that the tasting could only take place once in this form. In fact, even in the winery's well-stocked treasure chamber, not all vintages were available in sufficient bottle numbers for the tasting. However, it was possible to buy back individual bottles so that the period from 1990 to 2017 could be covered. Only the vintages 1991, 1999 and 2000 were missing.

It was obvious that it had to be the dry estate Riesling, but none of the guests dared to express this suspicion openly. The tasters' awe was too great, for among the 25 vintages there were natural fluctuations, but not a single failure. Once again it became apparent how much vintage differences, which we still clearly perceive or believe to perceive in young wines, level out with increasing maturity. None of the tasters was able to reliably narrow down the vintages of the individual wines. Despite their considerable age in some cases, hardly any of the wines showed a clearly advanced maturity or even signs of fatigue. Even more: All 25 estate Rieslings presented themselves at a remarkable level.

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As a special highlight, Wilhelm Weil had placed the 2001 next to the 2003. Thus, the coolest and the warmest vintage of the last 30 years were directly opposite each other. Nobody noticed this contrast in the blind tasting, and in fact the two wines showed more similarities than differences.

Without a doubt, the tasting proved what extraordinary achievements the winery is capable of, even in the estate wine segment, and even in supposedly less good years. For example, the 2014 Gutsriesling with the official test number 34003 20 15 achieved a surprisingly high, very good rating for the vintage with 16 points. Unfortunately, there is a weak counterpart from the same year with the official test number 34003 63 15, which we rated at an earlier time with only 10 points.

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Wilhelm Weil emphasises that he attaches great importance to homogeneous quality, especially of his estate Rieslings, as a business card of the Robert Weil brand. In view of the number of several hundred thousand bottles filled each year as estate Riesling, this goal seems very ambitious to us.

As expected, the quality fluctuations between individual fillings, which are always discussed with estate Rieslings, do not occur with the single vineyard Rieslings. The best dry Riesling from the Gräfenberg was still called Spätlese until the turn of the millennium, before it appeared as the Rheingau's legally regulated Erstes Gewächs. In 2012, the Rheingau wineries belonging to the Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter recalled their own classification and have since used the designation Großes Gewächs. Following the estate Rieslings, Wilhelm Weil presented two representatives of this category: the 2011 Erstes and the 2013 Großes Gewächs. Both were typical children of their respective vintages. The 2011 is recognisable as a hot-climate Riesling with little fruit and acidity, but with a delicate fullness and creaminess. 2013, on the other hand, was citrus-fruity, with radiant acidity and great depth. In terms of concentration and complexity, they have clearly gone one better than the estate Rieslings.

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Even before the estate Rieslings vertical, Wilhelm Weil had opened the door of his treasure chamber a crack and greeted the guests with a highly elegant 1983 Kiedrich Gräfenberg Riesling Kabinett, which was surprisingly not affected by 35 years.

Now he presented five Cabinets from the years 1921, 1934, 1937, 1949 and 1953. Although filled with little residual sugar and with a more or less off-dry flavour, they presented themselves timeless. The 1921 is almost perfect. According to Wilhelm Weil, when new corking was necessary again and again over the course of time, the refilling was carried out without foreign wine.

The achievements of the winery in the field of noble sweet Rieslings already after the turn of the century were underlined by Weil with five breathtaking and still dewy Auslesen from the Kiedrich (Gräfen-)Berg (1917–1976).