Vintages of Paradox & Mystery: A Preview of 2018 and 2017 in Germany and Austria

BY DAVID SCHILDKNECHT | JANUARY 15, 2019

In canvassing Germany’s precarious vintage 2000 for The International Wine Cellar in early 2002, I led off by observing:

“The decade of the 1990s was an extraordinary one for German vintners. At its midpoint (back in Issue 64), I wrote: ‘We are in the midst of a streak of vintages utterly unprecedented in the history of German viticulture.’ And I hadn’t seen or tasted the half of it!”

Not the half of that extraordinary decade, I meant. But I hadn’t witnessed even one-fifth of the unprecedented streak that has continued to this day. By now, any grower or avid consumer of Riesling under 45 years of age has no recollection of a genuinely underripe vintage; and any over 35 has witnessed or at least tasted the consequences of so many unparalleled and record-shattering meteorological events as to become practically inured to what can aptly be termed “the new abnormal.” And yet, after three decades of wide-eyed head-scratching, I keep finding myself in situations that make me want to beg, “Somebody, please, prick me to convince me I’m not dreaming!”

A Once-In-My-Lifetime Experience?

Talk about unforgettable moments from 2018: If anybody had suggested to me in 2002 that there might come a year in which on September 11, I would be tasting bone-dry Grüner Veltliner from a top grower and site grown that very year – let alone finding it both recognizable and delicious – I could only have thought, “You’re joking!” Even given all that has transpired meteorologically since notoriously torrid 2003, not to mention virtually unprecedented conditions during the summer of 2018, I scarcely anticipated what Bernhard Ott meant by “something I want to show you” when he winked as I prepared to depart our tasting session and motioned for me to follow him across the courtyard that separates his house and cuverie.

Bernhard Ott and Alex Schenner look happy to have harvested many of their top Grüner Veltliner parcels in the last days of August 2018. Behind them, on September 11, stands a new cask whose already delicious, bone-dry contents had just been racked to tank.