The Queen of Riesling
Sybille Kuntz took over the running of her family vineyards in 1981. She had left her hometown of Lieser to study business administration in Wuppertal, a town about forty miles north of Cologne and whilst there opened a wine shop to help fund her studies. The shop was a success and sold a vast array of German wines, but Sybille felt disappointed by many of the wines and felt she could do better. She is a lady with high standards, and this can be seen in her meticulous attention to detail in the vineyards and the wines. The 20-hectare estate is farmed biodynamically with the aid of her husband, Markus, who shares the same passion and love for the Riesling grape as his wife. The jewel in the Kuntz’s crown is their large parcels of vineyards in the Grand Cru of Niederberg-Helden, which sits above the town of Lieser on a 70-degree slope. These vines, planted in the 1920s, get amazing amounts of sunshine due to their exposure and benefit from additional sunlight which reflects off the Mosel River with mirror-like intensity.
German wine labels can be confusing, but Sybille has done everything possible to make the wines easy to understand. Her wines (except for the Auslese) are fermented dry with an alcohol content of around 12% ABV. They are bottled by style rather than by vineyard, so the range is smaller than other producers. They are easily identifiable by their label colours which are modern and like something from a Fallow & Ball catalogue. Their wines are all made from Riesling. The grapes for Qualitätswein are picked first, then Kabinett a little later and riper (more sugar in them) followed by Spatlese and finally Auslese, the off-dry style. As a result, the Qualitätswein is fresh, dry and fruity, the Kabinett fuller and more mineral is style, the Spatlese more complex, richer and rounded, whilst the Auslese is off-dry and drinks beautifully with some bottle age. To buy and drink a bottle of each is a great journey through German wine styles.
