2014 on the Mosel: Man Bats Last

BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT | NOVEMBER 17, 2016

Part 2: From Wehlen to Winningen

This concluding installment to my account of Germany’s 2014 Riesling vintage covers many of the villages where rain in early autumn presented the greatest challenge, and not just because these locations endured more of it, but because rain hit at a point where the fruit was only on the cusp of ripeness. Thus many growers had to choose between harvesting fruit at significantly lower must weights and with less-ripe flavors than they would nowadays typically do, or else face a wave of rot and disease.

Portions of the Zeltinger Sonnenuhr—to the right, the original Schlossberg; to the left the original, core Sonnenuhr—feature prominently in the extraordinary 2014 collection from Markus Molitor. Zeltinger Sonnenuhr bottlings from Selbach-Oster and Joh. Jos. Prüm – which by no means disappoint in 2014 – originate in the Rotlay, out of the photo to the right, toward Wehlen

A Challenging Growing Season and Harvest

Subscriber Access Only

Mother Nature presented a host of obstacles in 2014. But as a wide range of outstanding wines and numerous consistently excellent collections testify, these obstacles could be overcome using quite diverse strategies, at times resulting in wines that taste as though they must have come from two completely different vintages. A number of growers in Mosel turned in memorably fine collections.