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Von Racknitz

The von Racknitz estate is centered on the ruined cloister of Disibodenberg – by the confluence of the Nahe and Glan – where Hildegard of Bingen spent most of her life and wrote the scientific, devotional and musical works in which since the late 20th century huge interest has been revived. (Hildegard enthusiasts should note that the abbey she eventually founded – at the confluence of Nahe and Rhine – is coincidentally the site of a vineyard from which Krüger-Rumpf’s inaugural bottling is reviewed in this report.) With vintage 2003, Luise von Racknitz – Geisenheim-trained; inspired and mentored by Clemens Busch – began seriously reviving her family’s strikingly steep, terraced vineyards and bottling their fruits. These had long been getting sold in bulk, even though the family was among four founding members of the precursor to today’s VDP-Nahe. Because the estate’s casks had fallen into disuse, von Racknitz had to make due with stainless steel tanks for vinification and storage. Her then husband, Matthias Adams made himself the face of Weingut von Racknitz in the marketplace, and soon began ambitiously assembling vineyard acreage all around the Upper Nahe, especially in Niederhausen, being of the opinion that to achieve recognition the estate would need to lay claim to already prestigious terroir. Results were largely impressive from the beginning, although the wines’ unorthodoxy in a contemporary Nahe context – resulting from conspicuously “wild” fermentations and long lees contact, with very late, low-sulfur bottling – raised eyebrows and proved challenging to promote (though I would think that nowadays such distinctively delicious wines should appeal especially to self-described partisans of “natural wine”).

After a break-up of the marriage, in 2015 von Racknitz sold-off nearly all of her non-Disibodenberg holdings (principle recipients of those in Oberhausen and Niederhausen were Helmut Dönnhoff and Jakob Schneider). The result is a more stable configuration of the estate that allows continuation of the labor-intensive approach she instituted in the vineyards, with just a single employee since the beginning, and raising two then not-yet school-aged children. “I really hated to give up my [Niederhäuser] Klamm,” confesses von Racknitz, “but that represented nine disparate parcels, many of which I would soon have had to replant. Organics were the one methodological casualty,” she explains. “It’s not that I am any less concerned than before about environmentally responsible farming or enthusiastic about biodynamics, but I had to be pragmatic. Two people can only be in any given vineyard parcel so many times each week, and some of our sites are so steep that treatments of any kind have to be sprayed by hand. Wherever and whenever I can work organically, I still will. But in 2016, for instance, if I hadn’t employed systemic treatments against peronospora, I would have lost my entire crop, which I could not afford.” Overall losses in 2014 amounted to around 40% due to the strict selection to insure quality. “On top of which,” notes von Racknitz, “birds descended on the Disibodenberg, devouring most of its crop in a single day.” Luckily, none of her other vineyards had yet been shed, and in those her selectivity paid outstanding dividends.

In the late ‘70s, Luise von Racknitz’s father re-terraced and replanted much of the Disibodenberg, and in so doing fortuitously took the advice of a vine nurseryman who, unusual for that time, recommended utilizing a wide range of vine selections and clonal material to insure genetic diversity. That is almost certainly one important source of complexity in the Rieslings from these striking, dominantly volcanic terraces. Recent vine archeology has uncovered living remnants of Orleans vines here that might be centuries old – a story for another occasion. Speaking of archaic vine varieties, though, tradition prompted von Racknitz and Adams to plant a field blend nicknamed “Gemengenlage” with more than a dozen of these. The initial results from 2011-2013 were promising, but recently yields were so low and concern for Riesling and for the reorganization of her estate so dominant, that Luise von Racknitz did not essay a separate bottling. I recently revisited a number of earlier von Racknitz wines, on several of which I have published new tasting notes below, and am impressed with how well and how slowly these have evolved. Apropos marketing challenges, with the exception of a 2008 and a 2006, all wines reviewed on this occasion – plus many more, including 2012 and 2013 from Hermannshöhe that I have not tasted since late 2014 – are currently on the winery’s price list.

From Rheinhessen and Nahe 2015: Cool Concentration from a “Warm Vintage” (Nov 2017) by David Schildknecht

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2015 Riesling trocken Schieferboden

Color: White

2015 Riesling trocken Schieferboden

2015 Riesling trocken Vulkangestein

2014 Riesling trocken Schieferboden

2014 Riesling trocken Vulkangestein

2014 Riesling trocken Kieselstein

2014 Schlossböckelheimer Königsfels Riesling trocken

2014 Niederhäuser Klamm Riesling trocken

2014 Traiser Rotenfels Riesling trocken

2012 Odernheimer Kloster Disibodenberg Riesling trocken

2008 Odernheimer Kloster Disibodenberg Riesling trocken

2006 Odernheimer Kloster Disibodenberg Riesling Auslese Alte Reben

2011 Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese

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