2010 Riesling Kastelberg Le Chateau

Kreydenweiss’s 2010 Riesling Kastelberg – bottled in September of 2012 which is relatively early by the standards of Riesling from this vintage collection – delivers smoky, zesty, saline notes on the nose as well as on a sappy palate that are very consistent with the performances put in by most wines in that collection. Mirabelle, peach kernel, gooseberry, toasted almond and pip as well as rind of lemon make for a penetratingly high-toned and piquant personality, whose underlying stoniness adds to an overall impression of severity. This slate-tipped arrow of a Riesling should merit following through at least 2025. And I would expect it to hold much in reserve for its first half dozen years in bottle. (The analytically similar 2008, tasted alongside, is even more than when last tasted for issue 194, a superb model of complex clarity and penetrating elegance.) A Muenchberg 2010 also tasted alongside was however so awkwardly reduced and inscrutable that I have not published my tasting note, and I have unfortunately not had chance to re-taste it. Antoine Kreydenweiss reports having had to make very stringent selections in 2011 due to encroaching rot, which he says was a particular problem this year in the narrow, largely woodsy valley of the Andlau. “The first pass on most parcels,” he notes “was just to pick out rot.” One upshot of this was significant declassification. And the combination of selectivity with precocity and fairly generous underlying yields made for a 2011 collection that averages a full degree lower alcohol than the 2010s. “But then,” adds Kreydenweiss, “if you want to pursue the goal of botrytis-free wines as I do and in this place, you are going to have to pick selectively nearly every year.” The sort of positive hint of malolactic that hovers about many Kreydenweiss wines and that helps them capture rich textures and an extra dimension of complexity without sacrificing cut or clarity, extends also to many though not all of those from 2010, extreme though that vintage was – a demonstration that fruit generally ripened properly without excessive malic acid, and this despite picking for Auxerrois and the Pinots having begun already the last week in September (the same period during which this estate picked Riesling in 2011). Kreydenweiss is also firmly convinced that malolactic transformation should be separated from alcoholic fermentation by at least a month or two, as is normally the case in Burgundy. “I try to adapt the elevage to the vintage,” he says, by way of explaining how much longer – up to two years in total – his 2010s stayed in barrel than his 2011s. After a hiatus following a parting of the ways with their long-standing importer, it’s good to see the highly distinctive wines of this exemplary estate reentering the U.S. market via importers on both coasts. Importer: AP Wines, New York, NY; tel. (212) 395-9463 and Grape Expectations, Inc., Richmond, CA; tel. (510) 412-5969