Saar and Ruwer 2015: Rain in the Nick of Time
BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT | MAY 25, 2017
Throughout Riesling Germany, the summer of 2015 was noteworthy for its sometimes record-breaking dearth of precipitation. What’s more, it rivaled 2003 for heat. The resulting wines came as a shock to many – and perhaps even most – growers, because it’s hard even for them to avoid fixating on whatever meteorological factors happen to be setting records. But a careful look at the growing season of 2015 explains why it generated Rieslings utterly unlike those of 2003, 1976, 1959 or indeed other prior vintages notorious for summer heat and drought. Those all resulted in early harvests, off-the-chart must weights and abnormally low acidity, whereas 2015 yielded high but not freakish must weights, high acidity, and – especially along the Mosel, Saar and Ruwer – a harvest that didn’t begin until early October and often stretched well into November. Paradoxically, considering the challenges presented in so many recent vintages by late summer or autumn, substantial September precipitation was precisely what made for incontrovertible excellence in 2015.
Carl von Schubert and cellarmaster Stefan
Kraml turned out the finest collection in more than two decades from the
Ruwer’s historic Maximin Grünhaus and its monopole vineyards (left to right)
Herrenberg, Abtsberg and Bruderberg
The 2015 Growing Season
A mild winter and warm, dry spring offered 2015 two critical advantages. First, they triggered metabolic reactions that prepared vines for the dry, hot summer that was to follow, whereas, for example, the searing drought of 2003 had followed on the heels of abundant rainfall and seasonally “correct” temperatures, thus catching the vines metabolically ill-prepared for the shocking turnabout. Second, those balmy conditions led to a picture-perfect flowering and set in most vineyards, thus ensuring that although berries stayed small, there was a compensatory abundance of them, and persistently high skin-to-juice ratios reflected skins tough enough to resist both summer sunshine and the rain that was to arrive in early September. Opinions varied regarding the extent to which vines shut down during the summer, and local meteorological conditions varied as well. Some growers noted that despite a cumulative lack of precipitation from June through August, what little there was fell at useful intervals, a situation unlike that which prevailed in 2003. Still, there is little question that September rainfall was needed to jump-start ripening in many vineyards, though the prevalence of ancient, deep-rooted vines along the Saar and Mosel had no doubt helped to alleviate stress. To be sure, the amount of rain that fell was more than what was required to ensure further ripening, but the nervousness of growers proved unwarranted.
Finally, what happened after September’s rains let up was critical. The weather cooled dramatically, then turned clear throughout October. The result was that must weights moved only modestly but flavors developed apace; acid levels remained elevated but with an increasing ratio of tartaric to malic. Intriguingly, the finished wines also boast relatively high levels of dry extract, another dramatic departure from the norm in dry, hot vintages and a further indication that what took place in the grapes after the rain hit was more significant than were the conditions that prevailed over the summer. Where ripeness was most advanced and grape skins already sensitive in early September, growers generally began picking immediately, reasoning that there was no need to wait and that if the weather were to remain warm, rot and rapid diminution of acids might ensue.
As a result, growers in the Pfalz, and some in Rheinhessen and the Rheingau as well, in effect experienced a different 2015 vintage from the one lived by their Riesling-growing countrymen elsewhere in the Rhine Basin, including the Mosel, whose grapes spent four to eight weeks longer on the vine and who were able to strategize their picking with careful deliberation and strategic precision. The hypothesis entertained by many Riesling growers, Rheinhessen’s Klaus Peter Keller prominent among them, that serious chill is essential to conferring the last measure of finesse, animation and aromatic allure on their beloved variety, was certainly not refuted by the chilly but breezy and overwhelmingly sunny October and early November of 2015. Cool temperatures are of course also the ideal means of keeping botrytis at bay. What little of that began growing in the immediate aftermath of September’s rain could generally be removed with ease, and some of it was genuinely noble. A small crop of nobly sweet Riesling was also gleaned from very late picking, although in many instances that was more thanks to breeze-driven desiccation than to botrytis.
