August Kesseler, Assmannshäusen Höllenberg GG (Rheingau, Germany) Pinot Noir 2016

 This is one of the most remarkable renditions of Pinot Noir that I’ve tasted over the past five years, and just for context, that span would include tastings of well over 1,000 bottles made from that variety.  Beyond being striking for a German Pinot, it embodies a couple of characteristics that make it a sort of archetype for Pinot per se, alongside the likes of Musigny or La Tache from Burgundy (stop laughing, I’m serious).  First, it almost perfectly exemplifies an uncanny combination of “flavor without weight,” an attribute that transcends even the descriptors “delicacy” or “elegance” that are often attached to Pinot.  Second, when evaluating young wines — especially Riesling and Pinot Noir — I place very high value on “purity” of fruit.  This does not refer to a wine that is “simple,” showing fruit and nothing else, but rather to a pure core of fruit flavor in a wine that enables other accent notes to display themselves against a perfectly un-tainted background.  This wine is an object lesson in purity, showing ripe, red cherry flavors that are as impeccable as they are alluring.  Subtle accents of spices and some nascent savory undertones are also evident, but everything speaks softly in this wine, including the wood and tannins.  Regarding the utter absence of any astringency from stem or seed tannins, it seems that this wine results from the lightest possible pressing, or that the juice for this particular bottling wasn’t pressed at all, as opposed to being made just from the free-run juice freed by the weight of the grapes themselves in a recaption bin.  Based on the wine’s “feel,” I’d guess that — if it was pressed at all — it was by butterflies who had inhaled helium.  Phenomenally sleek and graceful, this is quintessentially “feminine” Pinot, and I only wish I had another bottle to see how it will age as tertiary notes from time in bottle add complexities to this almost ethereal wine.