Pfalz Riesling 2016: Restraint Rewarded 

BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT | JUNE 28, 2018

Like their counterparts from Rheinhessen, the top Pfalz Rieslings of 2016 are wines of delicious and animating complexity that managed to benefit from the growing season’s chilly October. 

I have already recounted the arc of German Riesling’s remarkable 2016 growing season in the introductions to my reports on the Greater Mosel (Part 1 and Part 2). In the Pfalz, as in Rheinhessen and the Rheingau, those growers whose restraint in harvesting enabled them to benefit from the chilly weather that set in on the heels of a record-breakingly hot, dry September were rewarded with Rieslings for which Bürklin-Wolf’s heading – “cool finesse” – was entirely appropriate, while von Buhl, albeit indulging in some wishful thinking, titled their vintage report “Back to Cool Climate.” That having been noted, many growers felt the need to begin picking well before the onset of chill. Despite the incredibly rainy, difficult start to the growing season, July was warm, and serious heat, as well as clear skies, arrived by the end of that month. As usual, the Pfalz was warmer and drier than other regions, so that ripeness – at least in terms of must weight – caught up by early September. Fearing that continued heat might rob the fruit of acidity, or simply out of concern to avoid whatever further surprises nature might have in store, many estates began picking.

New Blood: Young Italian Nicola Libelli was handed the reins at Bürklin-Wolf after two years assisting the late Fritz Knorr, last in a four-generation line of Knorr cellarmasters there. Libelli is both upholding the estate's impeccable standards and innovating.

Early Start Times, Leisurely Harvesting

Jan Eymael at Pfeffingen brought in his first Riesling grapes on September 18. “But they ended up barely gaining sugar in the weeks that followed,” he reported, speculating that this was largely due to drought stress. “In many sites the must weights only moved marginally within a three-week period, which was something not even the veterans here could recall having experienced,” added Richard Grosche of von Buhl. Eymael’s diagnosis might seem paradoxical given that in most German growing regions a year’s worth of precipitation had already fallen in the first six months of 2016. But growers have begun to recognize (as I discussed in detail when introducing vintage 2015 and comparing it with 2003) that once their vines become accustomed to ample water and adjust their metabolism accordingly, they leave themselves especially vulnerable to subsequent deprivation. (Conversely, as in 2015, if they accustom themselves early to drought, they can more easily withstand a hot, dry summer and keep metabolizing.)