Rheingau and Mittelrhein Riesling 2016: Stress Test

BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT | JULY 27, 2018 

In the 130 years that precise records have been kept, the Rheingau winter of 2015-2016 was the second warmest cumulatively. Two thousand-sixteen also boasted – if that’s the word – both the warmest September and among the rainiest Junes ever. “We never got a break,” related Andreas Spreitzer, “or at least not until late in the game.” Constant rain was followed by relentless heat and drought. Those stressful conditions put particular pressure on certain sectors of the Rheingau. Thanks to optimal October weather, the relative paucity of botrytis, and must weights that increased only slowly, the 2016 harvest was not badly suited, terrain permitting, to mechanized picking, which is nowadays a fact of life for many large Rheingau estates. But strategic canopy management and leaf removal combined with immediate pinpoint reaction to peronospora (downy mildew) were critical during the wet late spring and early summer, not just to salvage the crop, but also to optimize eventual quality. And in those respects, growers relying on machines or simply short on labor were bound to be at a significant disadvantage.

Among the highest-altitude, breeziest Rheingau sites, the Hendelberg – notwithstanding its VDP classification as an "Erste-" rather than a "Grosse-Lage" – is showing its advantages in an era of global warming, with exciting recent Rieslings from Kühn, Prinz and Spreitzer. 

Handiwork in the Pursuit of Harmony

Spreitzer observed that “if you rigorously de-leaf during a wet spring you increase the danger that peronospora will attack the embryonic flowerlets.” That is precisely what happened on a wide scale in 2016, even to growers acutely aware of the aforementioned danger. What’s more, aggressive leaf removal and hedging eventually left grapes vulnerable to sunburn, subject to unfavorable phenolic evolution, and unable to take full advantage of 2016’s October opportunity. Much of the Rheingau is farmed without cover crop, and the resulting lack of competition increased the tendency for vines to become accustomed to water without end, leaving them unprepared for the shock when conditions radically dried up from late July through early October. As I have had occasion to mention several times in my recent reports, growers are becoming increasingly convinced of how critical a factor the vine’s accommodation to conditions early in the growing season is. Success during the almost unremittingly dry, warm 2015 growing season, for example, likely owes much to precisely how unremitting it was. That year, vines were already starved for water when their sap began to rise, then throughout the spring, and their response to this early deprivation prepared them to get through the hot, dry summer with minimal stress and to eventually produce fruit with generous but not excessive must weights and ample acidity.

The more successful Rheingau (and Mittelrhein) producers in 2016 harvested late enough to have benefited from cool, clear October weather to make wines full of ripe flavors and featuring modest but more than adequate natural alcohol and acidity (the latter strongly weighted toward efficacious and appealing tartaric). Like so many of Germany’s genuinely exciting 2016s, the best wines from these regions represent even-tempered, harmonious, at times understated results from an extreme growing season. Quality is highly variable, though, as has become the norm for these regions due both to differences in the degree of diligence and preparedness from one grower to the next, as well as to the often strikingly different conditions from one site to another.

Veteran Hans-Josef "Hajo" Becker cut his viticultural teeth and conceived his stylistic ideals for Rheingau Riesling and Pinot in the mid-sixties, upending practices at his family's Walluf estate. He and wife Maria apply methods that today count as retro, but are no less radical or superbly successful than they were a half century ago.