During a festive award ceremony, the best Rieslings of this year’s competition were honoured. Patroness Minister Daniela Schmitt personally congratulates the winemakers.
Once again, this June the Meininger Verlag focused on the most important grape variety, the Riesling. In exciting and discussion-rich tasting rounds, the winners were chosen in a total of eight categories. Nearly 2,000 wines were evaluated sensorially, qualitatively and based on the well-known and recognised 100-point scheme.
On a total of nine tasting days, the Rieslings were intensively tasted, evaluated and the best were awarded in the final round. As usual, the wines were judged in a blind tasting by an expert jury of oenologists, specialist retailers, sommeliers and journalists who are very familiar with the diversity of Riesling.
In 2022, exciting discoveries can once again be found on the winners’ list alongside well-known Riesling wineries. A total of 142 Rieslings were awarded 91 and more points in the competition, with eleven Rieslings achieving the top score of 94 points.
This year, 1st place in the respective category goes to Weingut Odinstal (Pfalz, a BASF Exclusive bottling), Weingut Bott from the Rheingau, Weingut Raddeck from Rheinhessen, Weingut Schloss Vollrads (Rheingau), Weingut Kernlinghof from the Pfalz, Weingut Weingart (Mittelrhein), Weingut Juliusspital (Franconia) as well as the two wineries Lauermann & Weyer and Weingut Geheimer Rat Dr. von Bassermann-Jordan (both Pfalz).
Special awards goes to Weingärtner Cleebronn-Güglingen (Best Dry Riesling in Food Retail), Weingut Dautel (Best Riesling dry from a steep slope), Weingut Loimer (Best Dry Riesling from Europe) and Wakefield St Andrews/Taylors Wines (Best Dry Riesling from Overseas).
The Riesling Collection of the Year goes to VDP winery Schloss Vollrads from the Rheingau. In addition to the 1st place for the 2020 Schlossberg Riesling Grosses Gewächs (94 points), the team around Ralf Bengel achieved further top ratings for the 2018 Riesling Beerenauslese (92 points), the 2021 Winkel Riesling Spätlese (91 points) as well as the 2021 Winkel Riesling trocken (88 points) and thus achieved the best overall result of all participating wineries.
The 2021 vintage leads the list of most awards, here the consistently high qualities were recognised in the competition. The very good qualities that were already awarded to the 2020 vintage last year are now very apparent after the wines have been able to develop even further in the bottle.
The oldest awarded wines are from the vintages 2003, 2007 as well as 2010 and 2011.
The most successful German wine-growing region this year is the Pfalz with 340 award-winning wines, followed by Rheinhessen and Mosel (185 each), Rheingau (92), Nahe (87), Württemberg (85), as well as Franconia (53) and the Mittelrhein (41). Rieslings from Baden, Saxony, Saale-Unstrut and the Hessische Bergstrasse were also among the award-winning wines.
Internationally, Rieslings from Austria (51), France (40), the Czech Republic (12) as well as from Australia, Croatia, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia and the USA were able to place.
After the awards ceremony had been held exclusively digitally in the past two years, the award winners were once again traditionally invited to the Vinicombe of Meininger Verlag in Neustadt/ Germany. The patron of the competition, Mrs Daniela Schmitt, Minister for Economy, Transport, Agriculture and Viticulture of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate personally addressed her warm congratulations to the wineries present.
The certificates were personally presented to the winemakers by Ilka Lindemann, Editor-in-Chief Meiningers Weinwelt, Alexandra Wrann, Editor-in-Chief Weinwirtschaft, Karin Eymael, Editor-in-Chief Der Deutsche Weinbau, as well as Christoph Nicklas, Editor Meiningers Sommelier, and Christian Wolf, Tasting Manager Meininger Verlag.
Organiser Christoph Meininger expressed his heartfelt thanks in his speech: “I am so happy to finally see the people behind these great Rieslings again as well, to taste the wines with them, to exchange ideas in person and face to face again. I don’t know any industry that lives more from this exchange and from this emotion. Thank you so much for being here.”
The winners of the eight categories as well as a top 100 will be presented by Meiningers Weinwelt in its July issue.
