TN: 2018 von Winning Forster Ungeheuer Riesling Großes Gewächs (Germany, Pfalz)

A touch of RS which coupled with the oak makes the wine feel quite rich initially, especially when colder, but as it warmed up a bit, the acidity started to become more prominent to bring everything in balance. There’s still a tight acid core that helps keep things in check.

I’m not one to shy away from drinking my rieslings young, I quite like the vibrancy and tension that rieslings in their youth bring. But in this case with the oak, I think that richness demands some more time in bottle to integrate together.

ABV: 13.0%
Closure: natural cork
Decant: 1h
Stem: Grassl Liberte
Assemblage: Aged on lees in 500L barrels for 18 months. RS: 8.6g/L; TA: 7.7g/L

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I went to a Von Winning dinner a few years ago. The wine maker was lovely and I had a really nice time. When asked about his philosophy, he said he was really inspired by Claude Dugat’s wines…and the wines bear that out, imho.

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Interesting. I wouldn’t peg a predominantly white wine maker to have drawn inspiration from a red wine maker, but it’s a nice reminder that winemaking inspiration can come from anywhere really. And the style in oak usage is certainly there. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for the note, Rodrigo.

Von Winning’s wines are my favorites in the Pfalz these days. Haven’t opened any 2018s yet, though.

A lot of descriptors but what score out of 100?

John,

I don’t usually score wines. Without going on a diatribe about it, I find it tough to assign a numerical score to wines in any manner that I think would be consistent across time and different wine styles. I mostly find it useful in comparative situations like larger tasting with similar wines (usually a horizontal or vertical) to provide some sense of my relative enjoyment of the wines consumed then.

I will say that this was a bit of a let down personally. The richness from the oak and lees often felt like it overwhelmed the other elements of the wine. This is a different type of richness in Riesling. One based on autolytic characteristics rather than your typical pradikat sweetness.

If you’re looking for some sense of my relative enjoyment of the wine in some type of numerical score, its probably easier for me to assign a letter grade to it, in which I’d give it a B/B-. An interesting wine and a study in a different winemaking style of Riesling, but not something I’m running to grab a case of. I’m curious to see evolve with 10+ year of bottle age as I think it can turn into a really interesting wine, but in its current state, its not something I crave. It felt heavy on the palate at times. Often with bright young rieslings I often feel like I could go through an entire bottle by myself. I had about two glasses of this with dinner and felt myself getting satiated.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the tasting note. Von Winning was for many decades not considered as good as the “Three B’s” of Deidesheim/Forst (Burklin Wolff, Basserman Jordan, and Reichsrat von Buhl), but in the last 12 or so years, converting from the Dr. Deinhardt to the Von Winning label after being bought out by Achim Niederberger in 2007, Von Winning have been quickly improving in quality, to the point that they are a very big turnaround story in the Pfalz alongside Okonomierat Rebholz. Von Winning’s passion for vineyard management, French-influenced Tonneau barrique cellar-techniques, and ownership of parcels in the best agricultural land in Germany (Kirschenstuck, Jesuitengarten, and Pechstein) has certainly gone a long way to making them a success. I know that some people have problems with the way Von Winning uses barrique, the typical salty-creamy-exotic-fruit-and-herb style, and it is an open question if their wines really improve so greatly with time, but their pricing has not yet caught up with quality, and as long as they do not get greedy, I am happy to drink VW as an alternative to expensive Loire SBs (Dagueneau) and Burgundy (Coche Dury, Leflaive), to name a few French wine producers which VW wines sometime resemble. I know this thread has avoided discussion of points rating, but with VW we are talking about a producer that releases 93-94 point 1st growth Rieslings for less than $20 still. For the wine you tasted and described I would give 95-96 points.