The 2009 German Rieslings are wines I’ve been geeked to taste ever since the vintage reports started to flow and the teaser Destination Riesling tasting back in May. You can read Terry’s entire vintage report here but to my palate, these wines show a similar balance of fruit and acidity found in the exceptional 2007s but with riper acidity and maybe a bit more flesh. The wines seem built, with good structure, tension, and seem very long on the palate (my kind of vintage). Of the wines present at Monday’s tasting, the Nahe sort of stole the show with Rheingau Spätlesen following close behind. Wines I absolutely wouldn’t miss would be Selbach-Oster’s micro-parcel wines: Rieslings Anrecht, Schmitt, and Rotlay—they’re ridiculously good. One of Terry’s Nahe producers, Kruger-Rumpf, showed a couple of stellar dry wines and I have a feeling that the various Grosses Gewächs / Erste Gewächs / Erste Lagen wines could be very, very good in this vintage. Now, where to find some?

Terry has classified the vintage as “excellent” and you’ll find his notes consistent with the other reports I’ve read. A few key points from Theise on how the 2009 wines actually taste (from Terry’s 2010 Terry’s Germany Catalog):

• In the Pfalz and parts of the Rheinhessen the ‘09s grow more powerful yet not more opulent as they get riper. They show a sinewy strength, sturdy yet juicy. 
•  As you go north, ’09 starts looking more like a classic Riesling vintage of great detail and shimmering delicacy. 
•  The vintage absolutely craves oxygen…aromas start to emerge after 5-10 minute. 
•  There wasn’t much botrytis, and I cannot recall any gnarly or unwelcome rot in any wine I tasted. 
• 2009 is a Spätlese-lover’s dream. 
• (On the Auslesen wines) They are in fact the signal genius of the vintage…drinkable masterpieces, at laughably low prices.