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While artists throughout the ages have longed to catch time in a bottle, it is winemakers who have indeed
come closest to achieving this noblest of goals. A fine wine captures not just a single moment, but the span of a vintage, a lifetime, of eons of geology. A liquid suspension of sugar, acids, ethanol, tannins, phenolics, and chemical compounds can become a remarkable crucible of climate, soil, and vision.

We asked our experts from around the world, and the Decanter team, to nominate the classic offbeat and value wines that impressed them most in 2020. Our trio of judges blind-tasted and ranked them...

I love German Riesling and my go-to region is the Nahe.
A drive through the small, winding roads of the Nahe gives way to vineyards that are as step and impressive as those in the Mosel and the Rheingau. Oberhausen is located at a small bend of the Nahe River and is home to some of those stellar vineyards.

The respect for great German Rieslings has long been higher than sales of this classic varietal. Once, such wines were distinguished by their degree of sweetness, but the worldwide preference for dry wines blunted the appeal of German Rieslings, whose producers re-formulated many of their wines to be “trocken,” dry in an attempt to win back wine drinkers.

The River Nahe is a tributary of the Rhine that joins the mighty flood at Bingen, sometime home to Hildegard and the controversial poet Stefan George. It gives its name to a small wine region that makes some of the best white wines in Germany. It is warmer than the Rheingau, which faces it across the Rhine to the north, making wines that are sometimes bigger and more alcoholic — a fact noted by no lesser luminary than Goethe; but the true reason for its greatness is the variety of its primary rich soils.

Largely centered in the southwest of the country, Germany’s 13 wine growing regions represent a diversity of terroir along the northern limits of wine growing. Yet within Germany, there are certain vineyards that are simply legendary. The wines produced there are iconic expressions of geological and human histories. They smell, taste and feel unlike wines from anywhere else.

The crowned Prussian spread eagle is the clue to the fact that this substantial Nahe estate began life as a royal Prussian state property in 1902.

Anne Krebiehl MW attends an “exceptional” tasting held to mark the 10th anniversary of Dr Christine Dinse’s and Jens Reidel’s ownership of an estate whose roots go back to the Prussian state wineries of the early 20th century

Wine Number One is German, a dry 2018 Riesling from Gut Hermannsberg on the Nahe – a GG (Großes Gewächs is German for ”Grand Cru”), the top quality levl from this producer. “When I tasted this wine I instantly fell in love with it and immediately wanted to order some,” sais Kutej. However, that wasn’t possible: when he rang the estate they told him that Lufthansa had purchased the entire inventory of this wine for their first class passengers…

Our greatest treasures are our vineyards. It’s therefore particularly important that we, with both respect and sensitivity, bring them to the point where their original character expresses itself in the wine that grows there...

The journey home after a wine tasting is often hard. Luckily a few winemakers not only know how to make good wine, but also how to welcome guests.

When, on the 22nd September 2019, the traditional auction takes place in the Nahe another unique wine from Gut Hermannsberg will come under the hammer.

Gut Hermannsberg celebrates an anniversary: since 10 years impressive Rieslings come from the former State Domain.

Together with guests from around the world Jens Reidel and Dr. Christine Dinse celebrated the dramatic return to form of their famous wine estate on the Nahe. In 2009 they purchased the former “Königlich-Preussische Weindomäne” – Royal Prussian Wine Domaine – in Niederhausen, later called the Nahe State Domaine and renamed it Gut Hermannsberg. Since then they pushed quality back to the very top, so that today Gut Hermannsberg is once again one of Germany’s leading wine producers.

The owners and winemaker are satisfied with the development of the estate, but are sure this will go even further: the goal is balanced vineyards that give small and clean grapes by themselves.

On Saturday Gut Hermannsberg in Niederhausen celebrates 10 years of “Passion for Riesling und Terroir“.

Gut Hermannsberg (Nahe) is launching a new VDP.Gutsriesling / Estate Riesling called „7 Terroirs“. The 2018 vintage wine uncompromisingly realizes the high quality potential of the Middle Nahe. With this innovation the important category of Estate Wines gains a new dimension.

Jasper Reidel and Stuart Pigott – these are the two new member of the team at the top Nahe estate Gut Hermannsberg who make a real difference from this spring.

The wine-world is watching closely, as the results from the autumn auctions in the German winegrowing regions become known. These auction prices offer a clear indication of which estates head the elite, which winemakers number among the rising stars, and which vineyard sites are ‘hot’.

A Riesling-Trockenbeerenauslese from the 1921 vintage brought a sensational result at the Bad Kreuznach wine auction.

The vintage ranks as one of the best of the twentieth century all over Europe. And in Germany’s winegrowing regions, 1921 could very well have been the vintage of the century. Anybody who comes across a wine from this vintage doesn’t hesitate...

Whoever takes the trouble to get to know the wines of the Nahe knows the names of the top vineyard sites. Whether Traiser Bastei, Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle, Norheimer Kirschheck or Schloßböckelheimer Felsenberg – just the mention of these names delights wine lovers...

Gut Hermannsberg didn’t always have such great success as today. Only through a radical change in the style of its wines could it win back the reputation the former Royal Prussian Wine Domain enjoyed.