There is too much good German Riesling available

So many producers and styles, you can afford the very best, and the next vintage is always around the corner. I keep stockpiling the stuff. I do drink it regularly, but still, not as fast as I can buy it. It’s currently at about 20% of the cellar. Has anyone ever looked back and thought they bought too much German Riesling?

Umm…no.

I am selling quite a bit of wine at auction, but the estimates for the Rieslings were absurdly low considering the quality of the wines. 1971 Auslese for $80 from decent producers, 1975/6 same for less than $50. The estimates were based on what has sold, and so were correct. Do I value these wines more than the estimate? Absolutely. So not selling, and putting together a series of tastings to enjoy the wines
German wines are the orphan child; as the tide on most wines rise, Riesling (and Port) are sinkers. I am not sure the drinker part of me considers this to be a problem.

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yes, way too much since the wife hates it.

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No. If anything, I dont buy enough.

With a cellar of ~7,500 bottles of German wine the short answer is NO. One of the greatest things about German Riesling is opening it for others. Germany is one of the deepest wine regions in the world. I feel so lucky I love the wines more than any other region.

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7500 JUST rieslings??? Jesus.

I feel the same way. I’m currently buying at a clip of roughly 300 bottles a year. For me, the current opportunity to buy German Riesling, particularly from the Mosel, is the greatest inefficiency in my wine journey. These are wines where the price could be raised significantly and I wouldn’t reduce my purchases at all. I’ve also found that I particularly enjoy being able to open something with 7-9% alcohol on a week night. As for secondary prices, I don’t really care because I don’t intend to sell any of it.
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Wonderful stuff, widely available, and so far has avoided (with rare exceptions) the price increases top wines from the gotta have it regions have experienced.

Surprisingly, I have not bought too much.

Too many good wines available from everywhere, it’s so hard to keep up! [wow.gif]

Know many people who ended up with more than they later figured they needed to cellar. This happens with may wines but German Rieslings are generally a tough sell so I’ve seen many who still have much more than they can drink.

Probably the greatest value out there and I limit purchases as it is so easy to amass way too much for me.

I agree with the group. No problem at all that there is a deep wide pool of well priced highly available German Riesling. I’m relatively new to these wines and am just building a collection. Very much loving experimenting and tasting without breaking the bank.

My only concern is that there is actually not nearly enough available dry Rieslings with some age in the US market! I’d love to find more (any??) to backfill and to experiment with aging. I love the stuff young but aged examples have been really nice too.

There are more back vintage sweeter (I really enjoy Spätlese/Auslese) wines available. I do buy and drink those but so little dry wine. Maybe the prices are too low to convince people to bother selling?

Hah true enough!

I love German Riesling and though it accounts for roughly 20% of my cellar, I still don’t think I have enough. One of the wonderful things about these wines, is that they can be enjoyed young, middle aged, or with significant age. I’m always on the lookout for Rieslings with age. To me, they represent one of the relative bargains in the world of fine wine.

Bad kind of metoo. This was fantastic over the weekend in Cupertino and my wife said “I know this is well-made and really great but I wouldn’t buy it again”; hell, I’d bathe in it.
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Boo.

Kristi loves the stuff…especially the basic Donnhoff bottling.

It´s a good thing that German Riesling can still be had for reasonable prices. But not all. Kellers wines are absurdly hyped. And I agree that there is no shortage of fine wine from almost everywhere. Most wine lovers focus on the most famous names. A fault. Maybe not for those who speculate. And there are many. But for the drinkers it is an advantage.

BTW: I drank lots of Crus Beaujolais from vintages 2015, 2016 and 2017 recently. Superb quality to good prices. But maybe it is a fault to mention that because the internet is not only a pool for information but also one for hype and speculation.

No, I’ve never thought we bought too much. We don’t have as much as Robert (and we’re blessed to be able to share Robert’s from time to time!), but it’s about 23% our cellar, tied with Burgundy for the largest holding, and it’s the only region we still buy in quantity.

I don’t worry about resale, and expect we’ll drink all of it. I can’t recall ever serving a dry Riesling to anyone and having them dislike it, with the possible exception of die hard sweet Riesling fans.

While it’s true there’s good wine being produced all over, my gut feeling is that no other region is producing as much consistently great wine concentrated in such a low range of prices.

I love German Riesling and it constitutes about 18% of my cellar. Red Burgundy is first at about 48%. German wines are second.

But, while I love the wines and drink them often, I feel like I have too many German wines and am cutting back on new purchases.

One thing that makes having too many German wines ok is that they last AND get better for a very long time so no real need to worry too much about most of them.

I agree that most regions of German wines remain the greatest values in wine as where else can one buy wines from great producers AND great terroir at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, the one exception seems to continue to be the Rheingau. It has some of the greatest terroir in Germany - wouldn’t it be great to hand over Steinberger to Keller, Schloss Vollrads to Donnhoff, Schloss Johannisberg to Prum, Rauenthaler Baiken to Schloss Lieser and Erbacher Marcobrun to Zilliken (or some such thing)?

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Or just hand the entire Rheingau to some of the producers there who are doing well: Leitz, Weil, Spreitzer, etc.