Generosity and Diversity - Mosel 2018: Graach to Grünhaus

BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT | NOVEMBER 05, 2020

It’s the rare wine among Mosel Rieslings of 2018 – a generally forthcoming, even effusive bunch – that seems to demand cellaring, and then usually only because a surfeit of sweetness is among a given wine’s generous-to-a-fault characteristics. 

Continuing upstream, I offer my second of two reports on the 2018 vintage Mosel Rieslings, here including those from estates based along the Ruwer. Details concerning the nature of the 2018 growing season for German Riesling will be found, among other places on this website, in the extended introduction to my account of that vintage in the Nahe, as well as in my report that immediately preceded this one, covering the Mosel from Winningen to Wehlen. Most growers experienced their earliest-ever commencement of harvest because, even though the crop was abundant, and even allowing for locations where midsummer drought and heat caused vines to malinger or shut down, the cumulative effect of relatively ample ground water thanks to a very wet late winter, nearly unprecedented spring warmth, and early September rain to break the drought all made for metabolic precocity that no hurdles could prevent from crossing the threshold of full ripeness at a record early date.

For three decades, the top sites of Trittenheim and Leiwen have enjoyed many champions. Now, new pearls in the Mosel necklace are being polished. Beyond Leiwen, where the river disappears to the left, rises the Thörnicher Ritsch, championed by Karl Josef and Christopher Loewen; downstream from Trittenheim, the vineyards of Neumagen are being revived by (among others) Eva Clüsserath; and where the river disappears to the right can be seen Andreas Adams’ monopole Häs'chen, while high above it in a side valley looms Stefan Steinmetz’s newly acquired monopole, Dhroner Grosser Hengelberg.

Not How Soon but for How Long 

Where the harvest itself differed most dramatically from one estate to another was less in starting time – though a minority of Middle Mosel growers, rather than beginning in the third week of September, waited until the end of that month or even the beginning of October – and more in how long they stayed at it. Analytically speaking, the grapes remained relatively stable through October, tempting some of those who reported an unusually leisurely and relaxed harvest to prolong picking through the end of that month, or, in rare instances, even beyond. In retrospect, the apparent stability of fruit after the third week in September may have been deceiving. Products gathered from mid-October on generally suffer a bit in terms of definition and complexity – even if those deficits don’t track with any quantifiable parameters. By contrast, to the extent that there were any decisive shifts in grape chemistry, these seem to have taken place in mid-September, in consequence of which even a difference in starting date of just a few days could significantly affect outcomes.