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Randolf Kauer

“It was a hard battle,” said Geisenheim viticulture professor and Bacharach wine grower Randolf Kauer of vintage 2014. (See also his comments quoted in my introduction to this report.) “There were just five dry days in October,” he continued, “during which the temperature also obliged by dipping to three degrees [= 37 degrees F.].” Riesling was picked here between the 2nd and 22nd of October, and with precarious material and generally warm temperatures, Kauer rented a brewer’s delivery truck in which to cool the fruit, then pressed whole clusters and let the musts settle as thoroughly as he could. “Even so,” he reported, “within 12 or 14 hours the musts had already started fermenting.” When Kauer cracked open his large-format, leatherbound cellar book to show me some hand-written entries concerning harvest and vinification, we found a drosophila squashed to the page at the head of his 2014 notes. “That certainly fits,” he said, cracking up.

One of the two Kauer daughters is studying viticulture, and the family has recently been able to expand its acreage in Oberdiebach but has not yet succeeded similarly in Bacharach, where they would like to acquire a larger share of Wolfshöhle. Incidentally, anybody who thinks that even in Germany a completely satisfying, ripe, genuinely dry Riesling of well under 11% alcohol is no longer possible has obviously not tasted any recent collection from this estate.

From 2014 Germany: Riesling Resists Rain on the Rhine (May 2016) by David Schildknecht

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2014 Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) Weissherbst (Rosé) trocken Tornado

Release Price: $16

Color: Rosé

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