Von Winning, Deidesheimer Herrgottsacker, Riesling 2021

This single-vineyard Premier Cru Riesling comes from the north of the village of Deidesheim and is full of juicy fruit flavours, elegance and the characteristic spicy salinity that marks out these phenomenal wines.

If you have wanted to try the monumental Forster Ungeheuer, then you could start with this as a prelude, because the Herrtgottsacker site runs right up to its southern edge. The limestone and basalt that mark out Ungeheuer are the key components in this site as well. Literally translated as "Lord God's Field", this really does present a wine that is close to the highest of the many outstanding wines that Von Wining possess.

Elegant and with cool flavours of white-fleshed fruits, green apples and notes of mint and even pine needles, there is a delightful brightness to the freshness that brings the focus to a vibrant and electrifying Riesling experience.

Entirely fermented and aged in large, inert wooden vats, this wine has been made in the same way for centuries, as its predecessors have been, giving an extraordinary duality of seeming paradoxes - true to its heritage yet with continually reinvented freshness, year after year.

If you don't know this winery yet, get to! The wines live for years, but the stock is very limited.

One of Germany’s longest-running wineries, Weingut von Winning was founded in 1849 and given a new lease of life by Achim Niederberger in 2007. Bringing on board winemaker Stephan Attman and, in time, Andreas Hütwohl, the project was one of clear and brilliant simplicity: the wines from Pfalz were some of the most famous and expensive wines available in the 1850s.

• Why?
• What were they like?
• Why does no one really drink them as much any more?

The answers were fairly obvious:

1. They were amazing
2. They were amazing;
3. They became sweet and mass-produced and lost all sense of terroir and authenticity.

The "New" Von Winning then was a clear plan to resurrect old winemaking techniques using the best grapes and single vineyards available, which, as it turned out, was fairly easy because the best grapes were quite literally on their doorstep. These wines then are fermented in large wooden barrels that are 1,200 litres in capacity and oval in shape, they are a traditional German barrel called Stücke, literally 'pieces'.

These have no oak flavour impact, but allow for the Riesling to be really expressive and lose the twangy metallic texture that can come from some stainless steel only fermented wines. As we've got to know them, the wines that they make from a dizzying number of different vineyard names have offered myriad views of Riesling through the same multi-faceted crystal.

We feel very lucky. If you like the Win Win Riesling, then this is a MUST for you!