The Saar’s Deliciously Diverse 2017s

BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT | OCTOBER 24, 2019The outlines of 2017 on the Saar are
already familiar from my earlier reports on Riesling Germany in this vintage. A
turbocharged spring rendered precocious buds vulnerable to a hard, widespread
April 20 frost that, in the worst instances, killed off 30–40% of them. After
that, the weather was dry and warm – at times hot – until the end of July, at
which point the Saar, unlike certain stretches of the Mosel, got just enough
precipitation to stave off drought stress or reactivate vines that had shut down.
Must weights rose rapidly in response, while phenolic and aromatic evolution
lagged by comparison. Sporadic September rain led to unwanted botrytis in
numerous locations. Vine and soil management, along with vine genetics, largely
determined how much of a problem rot proved to be. A cumulative effect of the
aforementioned factors – precocious start, low yields, warmth, water in the
nick of time but then with some attendant botrytis – led most growers to launch
their earliest-ever Riesling harvest (though vintage 2018 was to blow past
those records). Fortunately, cool September and early October weather slowed
the spread of botrytis, and the Saar benefited from its usual slightly lower
temperatures and breezier, more open landscape than in the Mosel proper. In the
more difficult instances along the Mosel, what got picked early in the face of
encroaching rot could exhibit shrill acidity and borderline ripeness, while
what got picked not that much later, though less acidic, was concentrated by
not entirely noble rot. However, neither extreme was in evidence among the 13 Saar
collections that I tasted.&nbsp;&nbsp; 

Striking features of the 2017 Riesling
vintage were high acidity and high – often freakishly high – levels of dry
extract. The high acidity is surely a result of early harvest and cool September
weather, in some instances compounded by vine shutdown during the height of
summer heat. Among the Saar growers I visited, deacidification appears to have
been rare and confined to musts destined for generic bottlings. At some
addresses – including ones where this is not usually the case – dry wines were
allowed to undergo malolactic transformation, and the drops in total acidity
recorded in such instances testify to musts having harbored high levels of
malic. As I have discussed in previous reports on this vintage, the high levels
of dry extract – which, being in large part potassium, helps buffer out the
vintage’s often high acidity – are not easy to explain. Most growers, having
experienced serious crop loss due to frost, associate them with low yields. But
those few sectors or vineyards that were left largely unscathed by frost – on
the Saar, for instance, von Hövel’s in Oberemmel or Zilliken’s in Saarburg –
rendered Rieslings with similarly extreme extract levels. And a dry, warm
summer typically correlates with low extract:
think of this as a case of less solid matter being deposited in grapes due to
less water circulating through the vine.&nbsp;
<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1571940707377-Braune+Kupp+5_copy.jpg"> 

Wiltingen's
Braune Kupp and Gottesfuss&nbsp;(in the foreground)&nbsp;were, in 2017,&nbsp;once again sources
for memorable Rieslings in dramatically different styles from Egon
Müller's&nbsp;Le Gallais and Roman Niewodniczanski's Van Volxem.Nervous at Their Best 

There is a delightful sense of nervous
energy and spine to many of the Saar 2017s. But by striking contrast – and
sometimes at one and the same address – those that underwent malolactic transformation
can tend toward soothing gentleness. Concern for the health of grape skins
rather than any need to enhance acidity led most growers to press gently, and
some of the more quality-conscious painstakingly separated the juice according
to when it flowed (“press fractioning” is the term of art), dumping or selling off
whatever required greater pressure to extract. The same concern led most of
those who employ pre-fermentative skin contact to limit or eliminate it in
2017. Notwithstanding the influences of direct, whole-cluster pressing, reduced
skin contact and malolactic transformation, one occasionally encounters a touch
of roughness and rusticity from Saar Rieslings of this vintage, which may have
as much to do with high levels of malic acidity (or, in the case of wines that
underwent malolactic conversion, the “memory of malic”) as with phenolic
content. 

Thanks to the cool autumn and the
completion of harvest by mid-October at most addresses, the dry wines are very
seldom alcoholically freighted. But brilliant, lower-alcohol Kabinetts are a
relative rarity, and dependent on both a viticultural regimen and vine genetics
optimally conducive to achieving early ripeness of flavor, not to mention on
grapes being in rude good health. More typical of the vintage are wines from musts
in the upper 80s to lower 90s Oechsle, as such fitting what has since the late
1980s been taken to correspond to Spätlese or “lighter” Auslese. I like the way
Veronika Lintner at Egon Müller’s Scharzhof described 2017’s combination of
high ripeness, high extract and high acidity as having conduced to “relatively
muscular, weightier wines than in 2016, [a year] when they were unusually slim
and filigreed.” On occasion I had the impression – a much more common one when
tasting Middle Mosel 2017s – of nobly sweet wines that were less successful
than the corresponding Spätlesen. But there are small volumes of some superb
ennobled Saar elixirs (not least, predictably, from the Scharzhof), products of
painstaking selection and often picked out in September or early October.&nbsp; <img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1571940737239-Webers+mit+2017er_copy.jpg"> In 2017, Erich and Johannes Weber of Hofgut Falkenstein achieved a memorably successful
collection whose wealth of low-alcohol dry Rieslings are reminiscent of earlier
eras in both this estate's history and, if one goes back 120 years, the history
of Saar as a whole.

The 2017 vintage is less consistent in
quality on the Saar than was 2015, and the high points of 2016 remain, on the
whole, more impressive, at least at this early stage, not to mention more
quintessentially Saar in their combination of steely frame with delicacy and
refined flavors. But there are lots of vintage 2017 gems that no lover of Saar
Riesling should miss. Given such a wide range of finished acidity and botrytis influence,
compounded by a range of picking strategies and vinification regimens in the
face of unprecedented conditions – extremely high must weights already in
September, but coinciding with high acidity and extract – it is even harder to
generalize about ageability than about vintage character. The more focused and
energetic residually sweet Saar Rieslings should have a good run in bottle.
Track record should never be underestimated in determining what to lay down, but
in instances where the 2017s of a given Saar estate represent a significant
stylistic departure from the typical wines at that address, then most bets are
off. This is definitely a vintage from which to monitor rather than forget the
wines in your cellar!

My report is based on visits with a
dozen Saar growers between late August and mid-September 2018, supplemented by
subsequent stateside assessment of samples, including some from a 13th estate.
I remind readers that growers are grouped in my reports according to winery
location, so this one omits the extensive and important Saar Rieslings of
Markus Molitor, Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt and Nik Weis (St. Urbans-Hof), which
will be reviewed as part of my impending coverage of the Middle Mosel and
Ruwer. Disappointingly, I was once again unable to schedule a visit at Weingut
Dr. Wagner, and I was surprised when I visited Nik Weis’s St. Urbans-Hof to be
told that the 2017s of Weingut Dr. Fischer, which since 2014 has represented a
collaboration with Martin Foradori, were not available for tasting, the stocks
allegedly residing entirely at the latter’s facility in the Alto Adige. I
subsequently noted that Dr. Fischer has been dropped from the VDP’s online
register, and I shall try to get to the bottom of that matter and share what I find
out. Conventions regarding nomenclature and scoring are those followed in my
previous reports and detailed in the introductions to my coverage of vintage 2015
and 2014 German Rieslings. I reference A.P. (official registration) numbers
only where this is necessary to disambiguate two otherwise eponymous wines, and
the registration number is assumed to be that of the year following the
vintage, unless otherwise indicated. (Nowadays, many growers associate the same
registration number with a given wine vintage after vintage, though some assign
these numbers chronologically based on harvest or bottling dates, and a few
observe more creative conventions. Hanno Zilliken, for instance, allocates numbers
based on pecking order, so that what he considers the top wine of any given
vintage becomes A.P. #1, and so on down the qualitative line.) I only rarely
review a wine I rated 86 points or lower, but I make exceptions in instances
where such a wine represents good value, or a disappointment about which I
think readers deserve to know in detail.<hr>You Might Also Enjoy<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/rheingau-and-mittelrhein-riesling-rising-to-2017-s-challenges-aug-2019">Rheingau and Mittelrhein Riesling: Rising to 2017’s Challenges</a>,&nbsp;David Schildknecht, August 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/rheinhessen-2017-perseverance-rewarded-jul-2019">Rheinhessen 2017: Perseverance Rewarded</a>,&nbsp;David Schildknecht, July 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/nahe-riesling-2017-chills-and-thrills-apr-2019">Nahe Riesling 2017: Chills and Thrills</a>,&nbsp;David Schildknecht, April 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/riesling-germany-2017-no-pfalz-sense-of-security-mar-2019">German Riesling 2017: No Pfalz Sense of Security</a>,&nbsp;David Schildknecht, March 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/vintages-of-paradox-and-mystery-in-germany-and-austria-jan-2019">Vintages of Paradox &amp; Mystery: A Preview of 2018 and 2017 in Germany and Austria</a>,&nbsp;David Schildknecht, January 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/saar-ruwer-beauties-despite-a-bumpy-2016-mar-2018">Saar &amp; Ruwer: Beauties Despite a Bumpy 2016</a>,&nbsp;David Schildknecht, March 2018

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