Mittelrhein

Here's a fun fact of German wine geography: From the one region that most people would intuitively associate, as a landscape, with German Riesling, you will most likely never have tried one. The Mittelrhein region, the slopes of the Rhine valley from just south of Bonn, past Koblenz, to the mouth of the river Nahe in Bingen, is an iconic landscape of germanophile romanticism. It is strange to hear, then, that quality winemaking is actually having a hard time there, with potentially superb vineyards unworked and given over to scrubland, terraces in some disrepair, and only a handful of creditable producers holding on. Among those, some say foremost among them, the Weingart family. I have long wanted to place an order there, but only last summer got around to do it for the 2010 vintage.

In the shipment, this off-dry Kabinett. The utter classicism of the category within German Wine is nicely underscored here, I think, by the sylishly subdued label, and the old-school brown bottle. But this alone will not get the Wine Rambler to approve, so let's get to the more significant qualities:

Straw-coloured. Fairly understated smell of candied citrus peel, camomile tea and a hint of petrol.

The taste is so much fresher and more open: Wonderful rich sweetness, elegant ripe pineapple notes, the world's fruitiest camomile tea, the tiniest hint of caramel, good stable acidity, a mineral background. What makes this Spätlese wonderful is that it has the complex flavours of maturity (the typical lemon, peach and apricot aroma of young riesling is almost completely gone), but is still vibrant and fresh. It seems that, out of pure luck, I have opened it at a very good point in its development.

From a region not often talked about, a producer to watch out for.