Historic ‘German’ Riesling from 1811 uncorked

Riesling has an extraordinary capacity to age, but how far can you push the best wines? Anne Krebiehl MW tastes a top vintage of the early 19th century at Geheimer Rat Dr. von Bassermann-Jordan...

Germany wasn’t a unified nation and its first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, hadn’t even been born when historic Pfalz estate Geheimer Rat Dr. von Bassermann-Jordan was harvesting one of its best vintages.

This 1811 Riesling from the estate’s Forster Ungeheuer vineyard was tasted on Sunday night in the village of Deidesheim (26 August) to mark the producer’s 300^th anniversary.

The colour was…

…amber; the nose at first had a hint of smoke which then opened into notions of lanoline, beeswax, lifted citrus and white truffle.The palate was fresh-faced, friendly, just off-dry and, incredibly, still had almost juicy playfulness, verve and impeccable balance. That it was 207 years old left us speechless.

This Riesling dates to the year when the future King George IV was made Prince Regent and Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility was first published.

The rarity had been donated by Jana Seeger, owner of the estate, from her private cellar along with other rare vintages from the three local estates into which the original Jordan holdings had been split in 1849.

Three vintages of each Geheimer Rat Dr. von Bassermann-Jordan; Reichsrat von Buhl and von Winning, covering 1988, 1979, 1967, 1953 and 1925, were tasted before the 1811 was presented.

All the other historic wines were Riesling Auslesen, Beerenauslesen and Trockenbeerenauslesen from single sites at various stages of development. This made the freshness and pristine nature of the relatively dry 1811 all the more astonishing.

Gunther Hauck, Bassermann-Jordan’s managing director, quoted from the 2011 harvest book of Ludwig Andreas Jordan: ‘Not since 1783 has such a splendid wine been obtained as in this year,’ he said at the time.

It had been an unusually early vintage with flowering completed in May and the entire harvest ‘fully ripe’ by 8 September, according to the record.

Due to the Great Comet of 1811, visible in the night sky for 260 days, both vintage and wine became known as Kometenjahrgang and Kometenwein – ‘Comet wines’ – respectively.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe immortalised the ‘comet wine’ in his poetry collection West-östlicher Divan. Later in the 19th century, Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck was believed to have been partial to the wine of this vintage.

Sadly, it’s unlikely to be seen at many tasting events. Hauck said, ‘I’m sure tasting such a wine is a once in a lifetime experience.’

He added the 1811 wine had been regularly re-corked, although there had been no additions other than top-ups from one bottle of the same wine which had been sulphured.

Two bottles were used at the tasting and the last eight remain at the estate.

The Ungeheuer vineyard in the village of Forst, first documented in 1699 and classified as top site in the Bavarian tax classification of 1828, is today classified as Grosse Lage and exquisite dry Rieslings are still grown there.

Are any of these in your cellar?

Top wines from our dry German Riesling ‘Grosses Gewächs’ panel tasting earlier this year