Vintage Preview – 2017 in Austria and Germany: Hanging in the Balance

BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT I SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

It seems as though the climatic changes that help explain so many 21st century Riesling growing seasons of unprecedented extremes in weather are having this additional effect: For the third year in a row, in 2017 one can characterize the growing season for Riesling in Bernkastel on the Mosel in very similar terms to that in Krems on the Danube, exactly 400 crow-flying miles distant.

Record Early Picking

I just returned from eleven days in Austria’s Riesling- and Grüner Veltliner-dominated regions followed by six days in Germany completing my tastings of vintage 2016 Rhine and Mosel Rieslings, most of which took place this year in late July and early August. It wasn’t the first time in my career that a late summer tasting trip had overlapped with the commencement of harvest – there have been several, all in the past 15 years – but even though an early harvest looked inevitable following bud-break and flowering, I never expected to be tasting a September 1 harvest of Grüner Veltliner, from the Braunsdorfer sector high above Stein no less.

Grüner Veltliner running from Markus Lang’s 21st century update of the traditional Baumpresse. (I’ll write at length at a later date about this amazing outdoor press of Lang’s design, installed immediately above his air raid shelter-turned-cellar at the edge of the Steiner Schreck.)

Markus Lang, admittedly, was an exception, as were these vines. It was his first experience with the vineyard in question, which is beyond reach of irrigation. So Lang dropped crop early in the face of heat and drought; and by September 1 his grapes had hit 90 Oechsle (18 KMW in Austrian terms). In that first week of this month, most Austrian growers were only performing pre-harvest culling of Grüner Veltliner or unburdening stressed young vines in places where drip lines don’t reach. But in steep, exposed slopes, I tasted plenty of Grüner Veltliner already at or near 90; and against the walls of terraces, reflected heat, mice, and wasps (whose warm-weather prime was once again overlapping with harvest) were taking their toll.