The Weinbörse in Mainz ended this evening. Traditionally this has been the opening of the tasting season for each year's guide. From now until late September rolls forth a liquid marathon with more hurdles than on the Great Wall of China. That said, it would appear that 2011 will be a pleasant vintage to taste as we begin asking the individual estate to send samples. Not all is gold, but the acidities are well integrated, the fruit quite ripe and the wines showing even better at this time of the year than did the 2009s, another precocious vintage, at a similar stage of their development. Whether that speaks well for the longevity of the wines remains to be seen, nor is it certain the the finest crus, which have still not been shown, will have the class, the character nor the otherworldly dimension of 2010 or 2008, but they should be fun to taste. Steffen Christmann, the current president of the Verband deutscher Prädikatsweingüter (VDP), nodded in assent as I ran these ideas past him at the end of the show. Comments