Multifarious 2017 Mosels: Graach to Grünhaus

BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT | APRIL 08, 2020

Local weather conditions and harvest decisions go a long way toward explaining why quite a few Mosel growers struggled to achieve excellence in 2017 and a minority of those scored memorable successes. Continuing upstream, I offer my second of two reports on the 2017 vintage Mosel Rieslings, here including those from estates based along the Ruwer.

General accounts of this unusual growing season can be found in my previous vintage 2017 reports, and my report covering estates from Winningen to Wehlen details important meteorological and qualitative considerations specific to the Mosel.

The arc of vineyards downstream from Leiwen, around Trittenheim, and extending to Neumagen and Dhron harbors hidden treasures. Andrea Adam's terraced Häschen and Stefan Steinmetz's newly-acquired Grosser Hengelberg - both monopoles - are visible where the river disappears to the right.

Heterogeneity Writ Large

One source of 2017’s qualitative heterogeneity is irregularity of ripening in the wake of April frost. On any given vine – not to mention from row to row or parcel to parcel – might hang fruit resulting from buds that were spared, but also the fruits of secondary, post-frost budding. A great many growers emphasized heterogeneity within clusters as well. This might in part have been a consequence of irregular berry size, but sectors that suffered late summer hail were faced with scarred berries, and in many places nests of rot within the clusters. The most striking qualitative disparity from a wine lover’s perspective, though, is that observed between one village or one estate and the next. And the most important source of that heterogeneity has a human as well as a meteorological aspect. How much rot-engendering or otherwise disruptive rain fell during September differed significantly from one bend in the Mosel to another. And how the vines were groomed and the soil handled throughout the growing season will often have made the difference between a rot-plagued and a relatively healthy crop, or between having felt compelled to harvest hastily and having been able to strategize, or pause between multiple passes on the same parcel.

Take the Ruwer as an example. It seems clear from the testimony of growers and a glance at the meteorological statistics for nearby Trier that vineyards along this diminutive but prestigious Mosel tributary were plagued with significantly more inopportune rain than were their neighbors to the south along the Saar, or than growers in certain sectors of the Middle Mosel. And that could certainly explain why, despite some significant vinous successes, the Ruwer Rieslings of 2017 are not notable for their precision or clarity. Wolfgang Mertes of von Kesselstatt – an estate based along the Ruwer and farming a significant share of that sector’s vineyards – views harvest conditions in 2017 as simply an extreme example of a trend. “You don’t have the leisure that you used to have, to spend six weeks harvesting,” he opined. “That simply won’t work anymore.” On the other hand, the roles played by human expertise and exertion should never be overlooked. And as I have worried in the introductions to previous reports, it is hard to avoid an impression that several prominent Ruwer estates have not progressed viticulturally in recent decades and were turning out more exciting as well as more distinctive wines in the late 1980s and early 1990s (many of which I continue to uncork with enormous pleasure) than they are today. 

Leiwen's Laurentiuslay (in the left half of this photo) has regained its reputation thanks to the late 20th century efforts of Gerhard Grans, Carl Josef Löwen and Nik Weis.