We held the final tasting of wines from Rheinhessen at the Weil estate in Kiedrich last week. I was, again, underwhelmed. Given the fact that most producers have markets only for their dry wines, it was a long morning. The number of once ubiquitous 'spätlese' and 'auslese' could be counted on the fingers of your hands. Further, few estates other than that of Klaus Peter Keller and to an extent both Philipp Wittmann and Battenfeld-Spanier were able to manage the high acidities in their dry Rieslings in a convincing way. Even the most well-known labels were sometimes off the mark. The surprises came more from the midfield, where Backer-Landgraf, Dreissigacker, Sander and Schaetzel all turned in convincing performances. It will be interesting to see how these wines compare to those of the Rheingau or Pfalz at our comparative finals later this month. Those same producer's Silvaners, and those of Thörle, can also be quite good, but they pale in comparison to the finest examples from Franconia. Comments