German Riesling 2017: No Pfalz Sense of Security

BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT | MARCH 20, 2019 

What comes of a growing season in which Nature keeps her foot firmly on the accelerator and doesn’t hit the brakes until the last second? One answer can be found in the reactions of German vines and vintners to record-setting conditions in the course of 2017, and in the often distinctively delicious but highly diverse Rieslings that resulted.

Welcome to the New Abnormal

“I’m starting to believe that there are no longer any normal years,” declared veteran Von Buhl vineyard manager Werner Sebastian – a sentiment with which most German Riesling growers would probably agree. Meteorological extremes are putting a strain on the vines as well as their growers, and it’s a fair guess that only those who take pains to adapt to the new climatic realities will be capable of rendering outstanding wines. Even in a growing season that their predecessors would have deemed traumhaft – a dream come true – striking the right balances in yield and canopy management, strategizing harvest, and otherwise intuiting the consequences of unprecedented meteorological conditions are all bound to keep quality-conscious Riesling growers up at night.

The 2017 season in Riesling Germany entered on the tail of a frigid January, something it is less and less possible to take for granted, and the significance of which should never be underestimated. Very low temperatures insure that vines enter a proper dormancy, and kill off spores and larvae that might later put fungal and pest pressure on growing vines and ripening fruit. But an astonishingly warm February and March of 2017 set the temperature template for what followed, including record early bud-break, flowering, veraison and harvest. Fortunately, late winter and spring were not only abnormally warm, but on the whole well-watered. The exception was a virtually rain-free April, which, as I suggested in previewing the 2017 vintage in Riesling Germany and Austria, might help explain an anomaly in the eventual wines: high levels of acidity from a year of warmth and precocious ripeness. The most plausible theory (to put it in teleological-anthropomorphic terms) is that vines deprived of water during the spring adjust in anticipation of a dry season and thereby conserve and direct their energies in ways that will help them through subsequent summer water deprivation without suffering metabolic imbalances (including acid depletion). By this theory, what explains the extremely low acid levels of 2003, for instance, is not merely the infamous heat and drought of that summer, but the fact that it came on the heels of a rainy spring that led vines to adjust their inner workings in anticipation of water without end. And it may well be that April is the critical month for determining the vines’ future comportment. 

Again in 2017, veteran Hansjörg Rebholz’s rendered superb Rieslings and Pinot Blancs from the Southern Pfalz vineyards around Birkweiler and Siebeldingen. But recent achievements by Volker Gies at nearby Weingut Gies-Düppel, while little-noticed internationally, are also becoming exciting.