A few months ago, while on a bar crawl with some colleagues, I stopped into a bar in Cincinnati called Rhinehaus. I was actually a little excited when I saw the name of the bar because I thought they should have some good wines from the Rhine river region in Germany. After all, Rhine is part of the name and adding that Germanesque “haus” to the end of it clearly must mean this place has some connection to the Rhine river in Germany. Right?
So I walked up to the bar and asked, “do you have a nice riesling from rheingau or rheinhessen?” And the bartender looked at me like I was a total loon. At that moment I had a typhoon of different thoughts swirling around in my head. On one hand, I thought this was a great opportunity this bar is missing to offer some wines that other Cincinnati bars aren’t offering. They could capitalize on the German heritage of Cincinnati. On another hand I was really disappointed that a bar with a German reference to the Rhine would be totally clueless about wines from the region. And on my third hand I realized that I’m a total wine geek and shouldn’t expect other people in Cincinnati to know about these wines.
And I share that story with you because this wine is the type of wine I was thinking about in that moment. This is a delicious riesling from the Rheinhessen region in Germany.
This isn’t the first Wittmann wine I’ve reviewed. A couple months ago I reviewed the Wittman Riesling Trocken. And this is another Trocken riesling from then under the 100 Hügel name.
As a reminder, trocken is the German word to represent a “dry” wine. This one is nice and dry — and offers a touch of prickle.
This wine is cool and refreshing on the nose, with aromas such as pear, white peach, flint and flowers. It’s dry on the palate, offering tart apple, white peach and pear flavors up front with a chalky and salty mineral characteristic on the finish. The acidity is good. It has an ever-so-slight effervescence adding some texture to the mouthfeel. This is a very good dry riesling.
Wine: Wittmann 100 Hügel
Variety: Riesling
Vintage: 2011
Alcohol: 12%
Rating: 88
Price: $21.00
Disclosure: This wine was received as a media sample.