'a gracious vintage of fascinating wines'
The Rothenberg isn't just one of Rheinhessen's great vineyards. It is also Johannes Hasselbach's back garden; his kids have a treehouse that looks out at the vines. Johannes has been at the helm of Gunderloch, his family winery, since 2016, and the Rothenberg stops at his winery door. Johannes was not an immediate convert to wine; he freely admits it took a stage abroad for him to realise what a treasure he was heir to.
Gunderloch call themselves 'steep slope specialists' and Rothenberg is the 'steepest, stoniest, most demanding' site they work. It produces exquisite expressions of Riesling, herbal and a little smoky. Johannes says he used to think of Rothenberg as a hot site, but he now understands the 'tension between the cold downwinds and the warmth of the site'. Rothenberg marks the northern end of the Roter Hang, a great bank of red slate sloping sharply down to the Rhine. Gunderloch also have excellent holdings in the next vineyard along the slope, Pettenthal, where they rub shoulders with Klaus-Peter Keller.
After four hot, dry years, 2021 was cool and fresh. The damp summer made vineyard work a serious challenge. But the reward for what Johannes describes as 'sacrificial' vineyard work was 'a gracious vintage of fascinating wines', wines which will 'long outlive the memory of the hard summer'. Most of the Gunderloch range is self-explanatory by prädikat and vineyard, but a couple of lines bear more explaining. The Jean Baptiste Kabinett is named after the winery's founder, and is a classically off-dry Kabinett with notes of blossom and honey and an edgy suggestion of petrol. Als wär's ein Stück von mir ('as if it were a piece of me') is Johannes very personal take on two parcels of vines (a section of young vines from Rothenberg, and a section of older vines from outside it) and it is high-tension, taut and mineral. /NT
Offered subject to remaining unsold; available Spring 2023
