Robert Weil Kiedrich Grafenberg Riesling GG 2020

98 POINTS: Stuart Pigott, James Suckling.com
95+ POINTS: Stephan Reinhardt, The Wine Advocate

The vineyard of Kiedrich Gräfenberg—or ‘hill of the counts’—has been used to designate Robert Weil’s finest wines since the site was officially classified as ‘Weinlage 1 Klasse’ in 1867. Home to Weil’s oldest vines (up to 80 years of age, with the majority on their own rootstock) it makes perfect sense that Wilhelm Weil decided that it was only from this site that his Grosse Gewächs would derive (despite the fact that he could actually release three GG’s from all his single vineyards).

Weil's aim has been to replicate the style and quality of the full-bodied dry wines that were produced in the Rheingau a century ago, when the region’s finest Rieslings were the most expensive wines in the world. Despite the high quality of the Turmberg and Klosterberg, this is clearly on another level. It’s not necessarily more intense but it’s certainly finer and more complete—a wine of obvious Grand Cru class. Without doubt this is one of the very finest wines of the Rheingau full stop, and the 2020 is nothing short of a blinder.

“This very youthful GG needs some aeration to open up, but with every swirl of the glass more wild herbs, red-fleshed vineyard peaches and exotic floral nuances emerge. Very concentrated, yet cool and focused, with a very precise interplay of tangerine fruit, wet-stone minerality and a hint of oak that echoes down the valleys. Drinkable now, but best from 2023.”
 - Stuart Pigott, James Suckling.com

"Entirely vinified in large, partly renewed oak, the 2020 Kiedrich Gräfenberg Riesling Trocken GG opens deep, pure, refined but also very intense and complex on the highly attractive nose that is full, generous and aromatic and reveals more oak aromas than the premiers crus Klosterberg and Turmberg. On the palate, this is a very elegant, refined and balanced Riesling with a sweeter or rounder taste than the Turmberg (although it's analytically less sweet), but it reveals a similar saline vibrancy. The richer and rounder sensation might be due to the loess-loam components of the Gräfenberg phyllite terroir compared to the shallower terroir of the Turmberg, but richness and power are the nature of the Gräfenberg, which is still fresh and refined enough to represent its coolish terroir character as well."
 - 95 Points, Stephan Reinhardt, The Wine Advocate

ABV: 13%