What does that mean? In these dry wines, without the residual sweetness to create tension with the acidity, the balance must come instead from a wine’s body and texture, which include the components of alcohol and fruit. If captured properly, the wines feel full of energy, as if they are thrusting forward toward the next sip. If not, they feel flat and dull.

To put it another way, many of the wines seemed to lack acidity, which makes 2011 an unusual contrast to 2010, when the level of acidity was fiendish. Such is the endless surprise and beauty of vintage variation.

Strangely, some of the wines that I liked least seemed to have a phantom sense of sweetness to them, as if the wine itself was communicating what was missing. Is it possible that 2011 was a better vintage for making the sweet style than the dry, and that some of the dry 2011s might have been improved had they had a little residual sugar in the mix? Such paradox would be a bit too sweet, I’d say.

Even so, the wines we liked best were deep and resonant, with energy to spare, all with a firm core of the mineral flavors that are so characteristic of German rieslings. The top five is like an honor roll of producers, with the important caveat that our selection of 20 bottles is a representative cross-section rather than a comprehensive survey. So while these were our favorites in the tasting, that’s a long way from saying these are the best dry German rieslings. They are simply awfully good ones.

Our favorite was a mouthful: the Eitelsbacher Karthäuserhofberg spätlese trocken from Karthäuserhof in the Mosel, a complex, deep and energetic wine that offered just about everything we could want in a dry riesling.

Not far behind were three others. The Dellchen Grosses Gewächs from Dönnhoff in the Nahe is a beauty. Though still closed up, its precision and depth were apparent. It will need a couple of years to unwind a bit. The Winninger Hamm from Knebel in the Mosel was more immediately approachable, with rich, stony flavors, while the Von der Fels from Keller in the Rheinhessen was elegant and graceful. Likewise, it is already enjoyable.

Incidentally, the Von der Fels is not Keller’s top dry riesling. Those wines are hard to find and very expensive. Nor are the other rieslings on our list necessarily the producers’ top examples. Again, our aim was not to identify the best, but to look at a representative sample.