2009 Hochheimer Kirchenstuck Kabinett Trocken

Mirabelle, peach, honeysuckle, and musky scents of narcissus waft alluringly from the glass of Kunstler 2009 Hochheimer Kirchenstuck Riesling Kabinett trocken. At 12.5% alcohol, it captures a fine balance between stuffing and buoyancy, with its subtly silken texture matched by an impeccable sense of clarity. Salt, chalk, and peat seemingly shimmer through the fruit in a long, evocative, stimulatingly interactive finish to which pistachio and peach kernel adds rich further interest. It became more alluring and harder to resist swallowing with each return visit over a nearly three hour period, and I expect this impeccable example of restrained Rheingau complexity and Hochheim typicity to perform superbly in bottle for at least a dozen years, but probably longer. A bottle closed with cork – while repeated visits and aeration convinced me it was TCA-free – displayed slightly more bitterness and less diversity of expression than a screw-capped bottle. (Had I tasted blind, I would have mixed up the attributions of closure.) Based on its ex-cellar price of 11 Euros (which at present is all that I have to go on), this also represents a superb value. It gives me great relief and pleasure to state that Gunter Kunstlers 2009 collection confirms his having regained a position near the forefront of Rheingau quality such as he occupied throughout the 1990s until some combination of rapid expansion, severely damaging difficulties with personnel, personal challenges, winery relocations, and vintages especially challenging to the soils and microclimates of Hochheim dulled his qualitative edge. Sadly, I must also report the death last August of Franz Kunstler (on account of which my tastings at this estate did not take place until November). The qualitative evolution of Rheingau wine since the Second World War is unthinkable without the role played by this pioneer who arrived as a teenage vintner refugee from southern Moravia (and a town on the border of Austrias Weinviertel); honed his expertise for a decade at Domdechant Werner; then founded in 1965 the estate that still bears his name, and where his son Gunter began to work alongside him 23 years later. Gunter Kunstler said he felt no pressure to rush the picking in 2009, but nonetheless brought in most of his relatively reduced crop within two weeks in mid-October. That the 2009 vintage made possible a dry wine collection largely within the 12.5-13.5% alcohol range rather than higher – and this despite strikingly low, 1-5 gram residual sugar levels – has certainly helped these wines project refreshment and elegance. “We kept analyzing the wines all through their fermentations,” remarks Kunstler, “and they always tasted sweeter than their analyses (suggested),” no doubt a tribute to their generous fruit and sense of sheer extract sweetness. While Kunstlers residually sweet wines continue in 2009 to fall short of quality he sometimes achieved in the 1990s, Riesling of this sort now accounts for only a minor share of his production. I tasted most of Kunstlers 2009 Pinot Noir cuvees, but found they shared (with his barrel-fermented Chardonnay as well with one another) an awkward milkiness as well and desiccating salinity; and I prefer – hoping that I caught them at an awkward juncture – to withhold any further assessment until I have tasted them all from bottle. Wines from this estate have over the years been plagued with far more than the usual share of tainted corks, and Gunter Kunstler is now employing a mixture of screwcaps, natural corks, and in some instances glass-lock closures. He patiently permitted me to taste many of his wines from bottles with more than one sort of closure, and while I recognize that a single bottle is not statistically significant, I have included references in my tasting notes to a given wines performance under more than one sort of closure, believing that at the very least the sheer unpredictability of the results I encountered will interest readers. In those instances – simply in order to adopt a consistent convention – I have published the score I gave to whichever bottle I most preferred. My prognostications of age-ability are however based entirely on experience with wines under cork, as that was until quite recently the sort of closure employed almost exclusively at this address. Imported: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. 800 596 9463