This bottle of Pettenthal has been sitting in my cellar for quite a while. It’s a Riesling grown in one of Germany’s most renowned vineyards, the Roter Hang (red slope) in Rheinhessen and made by one of the country’s up and coming winemaking talents, Kai Schätzel. Although his family has a century-old winemaking tradition, you could call Kai Schätzel a lateral entrant. He took over the estate only after first having studied economics in the Northern flatlands of Germany. I guess at some point he must have been missing the curves of his home’s landscape too much.