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Hexamer

Harald Hexamer continues to eagerly and fearlessly experiment with his wines. Now that he has acquired substantial acreage in Schlossböckelheim (principally from the Hehner-Kiltz estate) and expanded his holdings in Meddersheim and adjacent Sobernheim, there is a lot of juice with which to experiment - perhaps too much for one vintner, especially considering that he continues to render and has a good reception for wines from Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Frühburgunder, that last-named being a precocious mutant Pinot established in just a few corners of Germany and of which Hexamer has especially old vines. (I typically taste most of those non-Riesling wines, but they are, not surprisingly, overshadowed.) Like Schloss Johannisberg, Grünhaus and a few other growers, Hexamer has collaborated with a local tonnelier to render casks from his own oak forest, which includes some venerably ancient trees. Thus far, these have been utilized exclusively for wines of the Pinot family (whose problem chez Hexamer is less often woodiness than volatility or awkward milkiness) but some should soon be ready to rotate into Riesling production.

“I had a super team for the harvest,” reported Hexamer of 2014, “and so I could be proactive” in dealing with the vintage’s challenges. But ask Harald’s dad, who recently turned 80, and he insists that in his entire career he never before experienced anything as hectic as the harvest of 2014. A few of the resulting wines display a tendency toward volatility and decadence, but most project rude good health. “I’ve never had a vintage that fermented so readily,” noted Hexamer, adding that “in fact, I had some trouble stopping fermentations in time for the sweet wines,” a circumstance that certainly testifies to largely botrytis-free musts. He postulated that the vineyard and cellar yeasts enjoyed the rain, and they would certainly have been encouraged by the relatively warm ambient temperatures in October, which influenced even a grower’s cellar unless it was refrigerated. Hexamer is one of those to immediately benefit from the new laws permitting registration of cadaster names, because it has always been a problem for him that his (as the name suggests, iron-rich, but also quartzite-laced) Eisendell vineyards, on an entirely separate slope parallel to the Meddersheimer Rheingrafenberg, did not have legal standing. His situation also illustrates the fact that these cadaster names are not always the names that a grower’s family has used for generations to distinguish a specific vineyard, and Hexamer can count himself lucky that “Eisendell” appears in the land registry at all. But the new law says you can only register the full name exactly as it appears there, so the full name that will now appear on labels is “Eisendell auf der Südseite.” Actually, Hexamer got lucky there, too, since the name (meaning “... on the southerly side”) at least has a pleasant ring to it.

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

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2014 Sauvignon Blanc trocken

Color: White

2014 Sauvignon Blanc trocken

2014 Riesling trocken A.P. #20

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