Fotos: Weinberge von Winning & Bickel-Stumpf

John Gilman, View from the cellar: The 2011 vintage in Germany is very, very good and will be a vintage that is marked by harmony, complexity and impeccable balance, rather than the electricity-generating acids and soaring sugars found in the very short crop of 2010. Given the blazing acidity of the 2010ers, which is a vintage that simply demands extended cellaring before it will be even remotely ready to deliver on its very considerable promise, the vintage of 2011 will provide wines that should delight from very early on in their evolutions, and yet also deliver very good long-term cellaring at the top estates. For those of us with cellars full of wines too young for primetime drinking, the style of the 2011ers is quite welcome. With the very long and measured growing season of 2011, the acids in many of the finished wines are beautifully ripe and suave, which gives the young wines a very elegant patina of refinement and impeccable balance that is dramatically different from the high wire acts of the previous vintage, and which promises to be very, very enjoyable right out of the blocks.