On the eve of the Grosse Gewächse 2008 sneak preview in Wiesbaden (on which I will be reporting in full next week), three of Germany’s top producers hosted a vertical tasting of all vintages between 1999 and 2008 from one of their Riesling ‘grand cru’ vineyards. For good measure, each of them also threw in a little something from the years of 1989/1990. Though it needs to be clarified that the VdP’s own classification did not come into being until the 2001 vintage, the concept of the Grosse Gewächse as the vanguard of dry German wines had already been established with the 1996 vintage, so that all the wines we tasted...