credit: © AD LUMINA, Ralf Ziegler

The best Rieslings of the year awarded
Collection of the year goes to Württemberg to the VDP winery Dautel

The best Rieslings of this year’s competition were honoured at a festive awards ceremony. Patron Minister Daniela Schmitt personally congratulated the successful winegrowers.
 
The intensive tasting of the Rieslings submitted to Meininger’s Best of Riesling 2024 competition by wineries from all over the world lasted nearly three weeks. Almost 1,350 Rieslings in all facets, from dry and young to noble sweet and matured, were assessed in terms of their sensory properties, quality and based on the familiar 100-point scheme, and were able to impress the expert jury.
 
The wines were tasted blind in several rounds and the best were honoured in the final round in the respective categories.
 
Among the German participants, the highest density of excellent Rieslings can be found in the Palatinate with 335 awards. The strong dominance of the Palatinate and the Mosel is also evident with eight and six wines respectively on the winners’ podium in the various categories. They were followed by the Württemberg region with 73 awards, the Rheingau with 67 awards, the Nahe with 48 and the Mittelrhein with 35 awards. Franken scored with 32 awards, Baden with 17, Sachsen with 5 and the Hessische Bergstrasse with one award.
 
This year’s international participation was once again impressive. A total of 69 awards as well as a second place in the dry single-vineyard Riesling category and the special “Best European Riesling dry” award went to Austria, followed by France with 40 awards, the Czech Republic (17), Luxembourg (13), Australia (6), Italy (4), Poland and Hungary (2 awards each) as well as Moldova and South Africa (1 award each).
 
A total of 358 wines were awarded 90 points and more by the expert jury, and a total of 14 wines were awarded the maximum score of 93 (out of 100) in the competition.
 
The winners in the individual categories went to very well-known and traditional Riesling wineries as well as to young, up-and-coming wineries. The winners include wineries such as the Weingut Schloss Vollrads (Rheingau), Blaul und Sohn as well as Bohnenstiel (both Palatinate), Goswin Lambrich (Mittelrhein), Beth and Bischöfliche Weingüter (both Moselle) and Weingart and Matthias Müller (both Mittelrhein) as well as Hubert Müller and Reichsrat von Buhl (both Palatinate).
 
Special prizes were awarded to Weingärtner Cleebronn-Güglingen (Best Riesling dry in the food retail trade), Maximin Grünhaus – Weingut der Familie von Schubert (Best Riesling dry from a steep slope), Weingut Jurtschitsch Sonnhof (Best European Riesling dry) and Yalumba (Best Riesling dry from overseas), which is distributed in Germany by Schlumberger.
 
As in the previous year, the “Collection of the Year” was once again awarded to a winery from Württemberg: Weingut Dautel presented the strongest collection in the competition with its Bönnigheim Ortswein (90 points), two Grosses Gewächs and a erste Lage (all 2022, all 91 points) as well as a Beerenauslese (91 points) and a Trockenbeerenauslese (92 points) from the 2015 vintage.
 
Most of the awards went to the still fresh 2023 vintage, which confirmed its high potential with 663 awards. The 2022 vintage showed a certain maturity and won over the critical expert jury 311 times. The oldest wines tasted in the competition came from the 2016 to 1999 vintages.
 
The patron of the competition, Ms Daniela Schmitt, Minister for Economic Affairs, Transport, Agriculture and Viticulture of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, personally congratulated the wineries in attendance.
 
The certificates were personally presented to the winegrowers by Ilka Lindemann, Editor-in-Chief of Meininger’s Weinwelt, Clemens Gerke, Editor-in-Chief of Weinwirtschaft, Karin Eymael, Editor-in-Chief of Der Deutsche Weinbau, Christoph Nicklas, Editor of Meininger’s Sommelier and Christian Wolf, Director Degustation at Meininger Verlag.
 
The publisher and organiser of the competition, Christoph Meininger, thanked the winegrowers present for the great wines they entered in this year’s competition: “With this competition, together with the patron, Minister Schmitt, we are providing an excellent platform for both well-known and even lesser-known wineries. Having your wines critically tested in a blind tasting and then receiving excellent ratings is the highest recognition that a committed winery can receive. In over 20 years of Best of Riesling, established wineries have proven their skills here time and again, while for young, up-and-coming wineries, the competition has often been the springboard to great fame among wine merchants, sommeliers and Riesling lovers around the world.”
 
Meininger’s Weinwelt presents the winners of the eight categories as well as a Top 100 in its July issue. All award-winning Rieslings can now be found at www.best-of-riesling.com
 
All the award-winning Rieslings and further information on Best of Riesling can be found at
www.meininger.de/en/verkostungen/verkostungen/ergebnisse/best-riesling-2024