Germany 2003: Extreme Riesling

Most growers with access to water took advantage of a new legal dispensation to irrigate. Without such supplemented water, vines were frequently better off in heavier, deeper soils-but not always, because the depth of roots at times proved more critical to quality, and in stonier, shallower soils the roots have often been forced to go deeper. Younger vines were at a distinct disadvantage in extreme heat and drought conditions, but all were at risk, and most quality-conscious growers performed late and at times ruthless green harvest to alleviate stress and ensure that the remaining fruit would truly ripen. Between drought and human intervention, a potential bumper crop was reduced at most estates to yields at or below long-term norms.

It's often said that riesling needs a hundred days of hang time, a point reached in 2003 by early September. Other varieties frequently could not stand to hang longer. Biffar's sauvignon blanc in the Pfalz reached 106 degrees Oechsle on September 10: to bring it in safely in the scorching heat, cellarmaster Heiner Maleton had to lay dry ice in the picking tubs. But with riesling (and pinot noir as well) there could be few successful early pickings, and growers were fortunate when the weather cooled in the second half of September. "The sugar levels were elevated in mid-September," reported Karl-Josef Loewen of Leiwen, "but the skins and pips tasted bitter and unripe." Those estates that were stampeded into harvesting by fear of falling acids paid a price in flavor. "By early October," relates Willi Schaefer of Graach, "you thought at first, 'Oh, they're all already sweet, and the acidity is no longer high, so we can harvest.' But then you went through and really tasted and there was some flavor, lots of sweetness and nothing to criticize, but the excitement was missing." "My harvest schedule was quite normal this year," says Helmut Donnhoff, "perhaps a week earlier than usual but not more. Riesling simply has to put in time in October. If I had harvested in the middle of September, I would have had virtually the same analyses, but that's about all I would have had, not the flavors." Some riesling bunches, observed Johannes Selbach, lacked flavor even after turning deep gold and beginning to shrivel. In such instances, there was nothing worthwhile to concentrate, and woe to the grower who was not assiduously tasting his or her fruit, to say nothing of those who machine harvest and thus cannot perform a triage.

Paralleling this gradual maturation of flavors in healthy fruit were instances of early and accelerated ripening of a sort peculiar to 2003. Where a blush of early botrytis had perforated the skins, the growth of noble fungus was rapidly overtaken by sheer dehydration. Photogenically shiny, shriveled, bluish-black berries were pressed into numerous record-setting Trockenbeerenauslesen-which some growers, misleadingly, claimed to have achieved without botrytis. "It used to be that growers were proud to have botrytis," says veteran winemaker Hans-Gunter Schwarz by way of explanation for such claims, "but lately that subject has become taboo." It is certainly true, though, that rampant botrytis spores of the sort brought on in 1976 by September rains were this year nowhere in evidence.