Peter Jakob Kuhn Landgeflecht Riesling Qba Trocken, Rheingau, Germany

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Like peach close to the pit, the Kuhn 2009 Riesling trocken Landgeflecht combines juicily ripe fruit with subtle bitterness, tartness, and salinity. Suggestions of walnut and hickory as well as the radish-like alliance of muskiness and bite common to several wines in this collection make for both intrigue and invigoration. Firmer in feel and brighter than the other Kuhn trocken Rieslings of the vintage – though less refined and generously sappy for now than the corresponding Hallgartener – this impressively persistent offering ought to perform well for the better part of a decade. Peter Jakob Kuhn – for more about whose distinctive stylistic and agricultural aspirations consult my several earlier reports – had every reason to express delight in his 2009 collection, “but it didnt require enormous skill to make excellent wine this year,” he added self-effacingly and smilingly. Kuhn noted that he did have to warm the cellar to get a number of his lots to reach the desired degree of dryness. The dry wines as usual here underwent malo, but it was not a very profound transformation given the ripeness (and hence low malic acidity) of raw material; and most of the finished wines display plenty of sap and vivacity despite harboring low measurable acidity. Noting that “If you have to wait for botrytis to come, the berries eventually become sweet but harbor less finesse; early harvest always results in the best nobly sweet wines,” Kuhn suggests that such optimal botrytis harvest was possible to only a very limited extent in 2009 and explains his variable degree of success.Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279 0799

A largely unfruity wine, defined by mineral notes of struck flint and crushed stone. Yet at the same time, it’s ripe in weight and mouthcoating in its intensity, hinting at orange oil on the long finish. ——J.C.(12/1/2011)—— 88

The Kuhn 2007 Riesling trocken Landgeflecht – from a cluster of parcels in the lower Doosberg – features white peach, almond, and milled grain, including a pungently smoky suggestion of buckwheat. As with most of the best wines here this year, it combines a palpable sense of extract with genuine delicacy (albeit at 12.5% alcohol). In the slightly austere manner that characterizes much of this collection, here are myriad nuances – especially those in the wine’s long finish – that can only (and then very imperfectly) be captured in mineral vocabulary. This should be worth following for close to a decade, perhaps longer. Peter Jakob Kuhn continues his high-wire act of risk-taking, organic viticulture, intuitive cellar practice, and incremental steps toward an idea of almost mythic oneness with his vines and with nature, resulting in wines of highly distinctive personality – no doubt a bit too distinctive, even quirky, to the noses of some tasters. Kuhn finished picking ahead of most of his neighbors – by mid-October – a circumstance he attributes less to enhanced ripening and biodynamic methods than to stylistic intent. “True, we might have chosen differently and waited longer,” he admits, “if we would have known how dry the weather was going to remain. But after the ostentatious richness of 2005 and 2006, we wanted to send a signal that things did not have to go in such a broad, plump direction, but could be clearer and more focused, and I have to say that the wines realized what had been in our imagination.” “That includes a bit less alcohol,” adds Sandra Kuhn (for notes about whose own wine, see under Weingut Vom Riedel). The musts were settled to achieve greater literally clarity than in those two previous vintages, yet the primary fermentations ran smoothly. But before that happened, the wines launched into malo-lactic transformation, which in many cases ended up being protracted. I was unable to re-taste from bottle several wines that did not come out of malo until last fall. A single lot from what would become Kuhn’s Mittelheimer St. Nikolaus bottling was promising; but his Doosberg was too yeasty and reductive coming out of malo for me to adequately assess; and his Schledorn – due to be bottled unfiltered and as Tafelwein – had been stunted by recent sulfuring when I met it.Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279 0799.