2010 Bex Riesling Nahe (Photo from the producer’s website)
So, the 2010 Bex Riesling Nahe marks Riesling’s return to this site! Regular readers may know by now that it is hard for me to walk past a bottle of Riesling on a display shelf without at least looking at it. There are some wines that I have not bought and am not considering buying (most of them come in blue bottles or play with German umlauts on the label in weird ways…), but when I saw this bottle I checked it out: A 2010 (a vintage I am very fond of for its acidity and because Nina and I got married that year), a German Riesling, a pretty cool looking bottle, grapes sourced from the Nahe region which I know hardly anything about, and the price tag of around $8 were the principal reasons.
I ended up buying it and opened the screwcapped wine the other night when we were in a Riesling kinda mood (when is that not the case you might rightly ask). The screwcap is by now no longer a sign of cheap(er) wines. A lot of German winemakers have switched to either screwcap or glass lids for their wines simply because the chance of a cork spoiling the wines is greater than with these closings. I miss the cork sound, but appreciate a winemaker’s decision to sell his wines in a way that better ensure I get to enjoy them.
I tried to find out more about the producer of this wine but it turned out to be tricky: The website shows clearly that it is meant for the party crowds without interest in who made it. It makes absolutely no mention of a producer, curiously labeling itself “Bex Winery”. The talk on the website is marketing gibberish deluxe (Sample: “A powerful departure from the norm, BEX Winery specializes in Riesling of unparalleled quality and flavor.”). Luckily, German wines have to have the A.P. Nr. printed on their labels, a code making every filling unique and therefore one can discern who made the wine (I wrote more about that here). Unfortunately, this number is only meant for the wine authorities’ use so there is no online database to check it for consumers. However, a Google search showed that the “280” in this wine’s A.P. Nr. stands for Moselland eG, one of the largest German wine cooperatives.
Now, it could seem weird that Moselland, which is located at the Mosel (duh) would produce a wine with grapes from the Nahe region, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Many big producers do that. Moselland makes a ton of different wines of varying degrees of quality and owns other cooperatives in the Palatinate and Rheinhessen. When I found out they produced this wine, I actually had mixed feelings…
But to the wine: The website states it has 9.5% ABV, 8.5g of acidity per liter and 2.9% of residual sugar (whatever that means, I am used to g/liter). Apparently, the Tasting Panel Magazine gave it 90 points. A comparison with its 2011 brother shows that that wine has less acidity (7g) but the same amount of residual sugar which one could have assumed given 2011s lower acidity levels in general.
The 2010 Bex Riesling Nahe was quite light in color, slightly greenish. In the nose, I got grapefruit and other citrus aromas. It was quite refreshing. On the palate, the wine felt rather heavy actually with a viscous mouthfeel (not what I expected at all). It is dry with a healthy acidity and aromas of grapefruit and lychee. The finish was quite peachy and nice. I actually enjoyed this wine quite a bit. Not complicated, refreshing, the acidity doing a good job. Nina however, did not like the wine very much. She ventured out and grabbed a bottle of 2010 Dr. L Riesling. I couldn’t blame her. While this wine was decent, there definitely are better wines around from the same year and around the same price point. Still, if you are looking for an affordable German Riesling that delivers rather typical flavors, this is a good starting point.
the winegetter 