On Saturday, I visited Weingut Reinhard & Beate Knebel to taste their newly bottled 2008 vintage. The elegant two-day presentation took place—as in every year—over Pentecost (a major European holiday weekend), and the sky-blue weather played along, at least on the first day. Gernot Kollmann, who consults and makes the wines alongside Beate, offered me a ride from Trier to Winningen, so we had a chance to talk and then arrived early to open and taste the wines before the festivities officially began.

The big news at Knebel is that Beate’s youngest son, Matthias, has decided to work full-time at the domaine since finishing his viticulture studies in Geisenheim. He’ll help with the vineyard, cellar, and management workload and bring his perspective and point of view to the Knebel tradition—one that carries enormous meaning for him. He has already played an increasingly important role over the past year, accompanying me to wine-tasting events in Paris and NYC and emerging as the public face of the domaine.

In addition, after long deliberation, the Knebels have decided to redesign their label, putting the cursive script on a back label, keeping their coat of arms, highlighting the family name, and drawing the reader’s eye more deliberately to site and (when appropriate) Prädikat.

I had already traveled twice to Knebel recently to taste some barrel and tank samples: once with Stephen Bitterolf of NYC’s Crush Wine & Spirits and then again with my colleague Dan Melia and Rubén Sanz Ramiro, former wine steward at the NYC’s Monday Room. On Stephen’s visit, Matthias took us on a short hike up the drywall terraces of the Röttgen vineyard. Knebel’s vines in these plots, as with Ulli Stein’s vineyards, are mostly trained on wooden stakes, with one cane per vine, and also tied down by willow. The slate, to quote Stephen, looked more like “slate bricks” in this sector of the Röttgen. Matthias also made a quick stop for us at Heymann-Löwenstein, and Reinhard Löwenstein kindly gave us some samples to take along. The next week Matthias took Dan, Ruben, and me on a (death-defying) monorail ride up the imposing Uhlen after we had tasted some tank samples with Gernot in the cellar.

True to the 2008 vintage, the wines have lower alcohol—a welcome change—than the previous few years. In fact, I was able to re-taste certain 2007s alongside their 2008 counterparts, such as Von den Terrassen Riesling trocken from both vintages. The 2008 is lighter, with only 11.5% alcohol, whereas 2007 is just now starting to open up and reveal itself. The 2008 Riesling trocken von den Terrassen was partly fermented and aged in a large, used acacian barrel from South Tyrol. Moreover, I was also deeply impressed by the 2008 Röttgen Spätlese trocken. Gernot feels that early on it had more aromatics than the typically austere and masculine Uhlen Spätlese trocken, which also needs more time in bottle. I also liked the feinherb wines from the overlooked sites of Hamm and Brückstück. Spätlesen and Auslesen with more noticeable residual sugar and Beate’s dessert wines, though all in small quantities in 2008, were pure and very good.

To celebrate this first presentation day, I was invited with other guests to a special dinner in Koblenz that paired various dishes to Knebels’ wines, including 2006 Röttgen and Uhlen BA magnums at the end.

Tags: Reinhard & Beate Knebel

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