White Wine of the Year - the Greatest Value German Riesling from 2015, One of the Great Vintages of My Lifetime

For Everyone Who Wants to Try $75 German Grand Cru Riesling, But Can't
This Wine Shows What Great Riesling Can Do with Elite Terroir in a Fantastic Vintage
Minerality, Thunderous Fruit, Tolstoyan Complexity
One of the Great White Wine Values I've Offered ($29.99)

It almost the end of 2016 and I have not yet emailed on my white wine of the year. It's been a historical year in wine with two top of the heap, vintages of the century in two regions/areas that Fass Selections is very heavy in. That is the Northern Rhone and Germany. I had no choice what the white wine of the year was as soon as I tasted my first 15 Riesling on German soil this past August.

The key was having to find the right wine.
 - a wine that is affordable for all on the list,
 - a wine that can be drunk young and
 - a wine that offered even more extraordinary value that usual.

As soon as I arrived at today's estate I knew I had found the wine after tasting through the lineup. What is highly unusual and significant about this white wine of the year is that it is a NEW winery. This has never happened before. It was recommended by a close friend in Germany whose palate is exemplary and I trust to a T. To have a new winery (to be new to me and the German public was something else and quite unprecedented) as the Fass Selections white wine of the year is something I was not looking for as I was sure it would be Müllen or Battenfeld Spanier or something of that ilk that has a reputation around these parts.  But Zellertal is only recently had their quality uptick and the wines are Grand Cru Quality for village prices so I could not resist.

But the most extraordinary German Riesling value I tasted from the great 2015 vintage was the 2015 Weingut Schwedhelm Riesling Schwarzer Herrgott "GG" for as little as $29.99 on 4 bottles and up to $27.99 on a 12 bottle case. The wine is simply extraordinary. Minerals galore all over the nose. This is a super duper mineral vintage along with thunderous levels of fruit. Vineyard peach, apricot, dark clay aromas, also tangelo and blood orange round out the panoply of aromas. Big, impressive palate, with huge expansive flavors that fan out in every direction on the palate. Very pure and long. So brilliantly complex and beautiful pitch perfect ripeness. Amazing mouthfeel. So complex. So sick. This is a great wine. Amazing intensity and a finish that just does not quit. I could not believe how complete this wine was. Compact and built to age but it was so unbelievably expressive on this day. So in a highly unusual break from Fass Selections E-Mail tradition I led with the tasting note.

So where is this winery? Who is behind this winery and why and why is the terroir of Zellertal and Schwarzer Hergott special?

This winery is in Zellertal which is in the Pfalz but also lies on the Pfalz/Rheinhessen border. This is an important fact. The Zellertal is as unique and special an area as I've ever been to in all of my travels in Germany. It is beautiful. The vineyards are all south facing and to the west is Donnersberg, which is the biggest mountain in the Pfalz, which translates to the "Rock of Thunder." This keeps it relatively dry and windy which is perfect for the ripening of Riesling. But what makes Zellertal stand above the rest in the Pfalz is the soil, which has huge concentrations of limestone and clay. You just do not find that in the Pfalz. The Pfalz is usually hot but driving up the hills to Zellertal you can tell you are going higher up than normal. They have their own special unique microclimate that is essentially a cool climate area in an area that is know for heat. Kind of like Laible with Durbach in Baden. This cooler microclimate leads to later vegetative process and combine that with the lack of rain and the poor rocky soils you have the recipe for success. High acid wines with dazzling purity and a particular fine mineral taste mark the Rieslings of Georg Schwedhelm. They are much more Rheinhessen than Pfalz. If you go south towards the Mittlehardt in the Pfalz the terroir changes dramatically and is completely night and day to Zellertal but if you go east towards the Rheinhessen the terroir changes more slowly if at all. For example Klaus Peter Keller is only 5KM away and his terroir is generally the same as Schwedhelm.

Georg Schwedhelm is as kind as he is passionate, ambitious and knowledgeable. We tasted, toured with German precision and alacrity and he is a fountain of endless information about this fascinating enclave of the Pfalz. Georg officially became full time at the estate in 2012 and is moving this estate forward with focused and detailed precision. It's no wonder as this was not his intended path as he graduated with degrees in business and economics at university in Mannheim. He runs it with his brother who went to the winemaker university in Geisenheim. His brother took over the cellar completely in 2006. They built a gorgeous new tasting room out of their parent's old house with a stunning view of the Zellertal and beyond from it. It is made entirely out of wood and is very modern yet homely.


The Schwarzer Herrgott which is his star site is an extraordinary vineyard to walk through. It is full of heavy limestone and clay. I walked through both parcels that the Schwarzer Herrgott is sourced from with Georg this past August. One area has limestone walls one each side where the monks used to recite their prayers when they were tending the vineyards centuries ago. There is also a massive limestone rock called the Wotanfels (Rock of Wotan) who is better known as Odin the Norse God. Centuries ago Celtic people settled in Zellertal and used the Wotanfels for sacrifices and ceremonies. Geologists have told Georg that this rock is unique to this area within a radius of 80 km.   It is the oldest documented vineyard in the entire Pfalz. They have four parcels but only two parcels are used in the Schwarzer Hergott "GG" style wine. I call it that because Weingut Schwedhelm is not in the VDP yet but are in fact in a young apprentice program that is sponsored by the VDP. They started in 2013 and it ends in 2017. These "on the cusp" of bring admitted to the VDP estates are where all the value is in Germany these days.

2015 Weingut Schwedhelm Schwarzer Herrgott Riesling Trocken - $31.99 ($119.96 4-pack, $335.88 12 bottle case ($27.99))