Prefer the old site?Launch →

Prinz

Fred Prinz’s vintage 2017 crop was largely spared the April frost but greatly reduced by early-August hail, with the Jungfer especially hard-hit. “The grapes were already softening at that point,” he reports, “and it wasn’t dry enough for long enough thereafter to undo the damage. So we ended up harvesting many parcels just to do a rapid pressing and sell-off the juice in bulk.” Add to that a certain amount of negative botrytis engendered by late summer rain, and the upshot was some of the lowest yields in this estate’s history. From just over one acre of vines in the Frühernberg, for instance, Prinz harvested not quite a ton and a half of grapes. “We left a bit of fruit hanging there because the botrytis looked promising,” he relates, “and in fact there is a Frühernberg Auslese that nobody has even tasted yet,” as well as a Jungfer Beerenauslese – “or maybe it’s really a thick Auslese,” suggests Prinz – about the release of which he is evidently undecided. What Prinz salvaged from 2017, was picked all the way through the first week in November – making for a protracted harvest by vintage standards – and with largely impressive results. Acid levels were above normal and must weights generally moderate. Prinz refers to the dry wines as “cool, and slim [schlank]” in character, but extremely concentrated. “The hail was like a severe green harvest,” he contends, “and if a third of the fruit is gone, then what’s left is going to become that much more concentrated.” I experienced these wines’ phenolic concentration and acidity as unusually well-integrated for the vintage and found their textures often surprisingly caressing. One could quibble with the descriptor “slim” inasmuch as several of the wines reached 13% alcohol. But that proved not to be a significant handicap; and the best bottlings of this collection have a spring in their step.

Despite the penury of 2017, Prinz kept to his post-2015 resolution to rely entirely on estate fruit, whereas formerly he had fruit contracts to inform certain generic bottlings. Not just total volume but also the total number of individual bottlings from vintage 2017 was reduced, on top of which I was disheartened to discover that not one bottle of Schönhell Grosses Gewächs was available for me to taste by the time I visited in November, 2018. (I also did not taste one tiny lot of wine about which at the time of my visit Prinz had not yet decided whether it would be sold as a second Jungfer Spätlese or auctioned as his latest Juffer Kabinett Goldkapsel – which it eventually was. For a great deal of background on this estate, consult the introduction to my coverage of its 2015s and 2016s.)

From Rheingau & Mittelrhein Riesling: Rising to 2017’s Challenges (Aug 2019) by David Schildknecht

Reviews

Wines

Sort by default

2017 Roter Riesling trocken

Color: White

Subscriber Access Only

or Sign Up

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer vitae aliquam odio. Aliquam purus diam, tempor et consectetur vitae, eleifend ac quam. Proin nec mauris ac odio iaculis semper. Integer posuere pharetra aliquet. Nullam tincidunt sagittis est in maximus. Donec sem orci, vulputate ac quam non, consectetur fermentum diam. In dignissim magna id orci dignissim convallis. Integer sit amet placerat dui. Aliquam pharetra ornare nulla at vulputate. Sed dictum, mi eget fringilla lacinia, nisl tortor condimentum mi, vitae ultrices quam diam ac neque. Donec hendrerit vulputate felis, fringilla varius massa.