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Schäfer-Fröhlich

Despite the construction of a new winery, the tasting still took place in the usual tasting room in Bockenau. As with every construction project in the world, Tim Fröhlich’s has been delayed. He is now resigned to vinify the 2023 vintage in the old premises. It goes against his grain to rush the project, and he says, “When it comes to harvesting, I need calm.” Yet he looks forward to having more space in the future: “We will have a lot more time to dedicate more sensibly to the quality of our wines, rather than moving stuff around in order to get to other stuff,” in the old winery which he has now outgrown. “We will be able to work in an even more gentle fashion, have even less pumping,” he says. Fröhlich farms 23 hectares, including the Grosse Lagen of Bockenheimer Felseneck and Stromberg, Schlossböckelheimer Felsenberg and Kupfergrube and both Halenberg and Frühlingsplätzchen in Monzingen. Eighty-five percent of his plantings are Riesling. The rest are white Pinot varieties, some Chardonnay and, excitingly, some Pinot Noir. Fröhlich, who took over his parental estate in 1995, is obsessed with detail and articulates his ideas. “One of the things that is really important in these warmer years,” he says, “and which we have learned to handle by now, is canopy management: we only de-leaf by hand, about six to seven times throughout the vegetation period. The idea is to avoid the hot midday sun. It took a lot of work, mostly picking leaves from the inside of the canopy.” He says he likes to be out with his team and share “the intensity of the work.” The grapes are harvested into boxes and transported in a cooled truck. They are put on a sorting band in the winery for a second selection, and whole bunches are gently crushed. Fröhlich no longer is a fan of skin contact – “We have retreated more and more from maceration,” he says. For 2022, he adjusted all of his press programs to avoid phenolics. He also speaks about harvest temperatures: “Something we learned in warmer years is that the best wines are also those harvested later – with cooler nights. You may think that once it was hot, nothing cool could follow, but that is not true. We are lucky here to have a longer vegetation period, to end up harvesting at a time when it is cooler, which brings a kick and freshness. We started around 11 September – relatively early for us – we could have finished earlier, but we got cool nights, and the fruit was healthy, so we finished on 14 October.” His Rieslings, named Vulkangestein and Schiefergestein, sourced from the Grosse Lagen with these respective soils, i.e., of volcanic porphyry and melaphyres and slate, or Schiefer in German, respectively, “allow him to keep the GGs at an absolute height. Our GGs throughout are from the steepest, stoniest parcels in order to have finesse,” he says. “I love what is vibrant and fine. The poorer the soil, the finer the wine.” Thus, anything at all that is not up to these standards goes into these two wines, and both the GGs and these wines benefit. Spontaneous ferments are the rule – at least for the Rieslings – and more than half of the GGs are vinified in stainless steel. He also employs neutral, used 500-liter tonneaux. The wines ferment to dryness which here means around 3g/L and less. There is not one aspect he does not pay attention to – his sites, his genetics, his fine-tuned approach to farming and his absolute exactitude in the cellar. His thoughts on Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc are as fascinating as those on Riesling: he avoids all malo-lactic fermentation for these white wines, which usually come from different and richer soils: “Yeast is merely the transporter of what it finds. Heavier soils turn into richer wines. Finer soils turn into finer wines. Native yeasts magnify this effect – they make heavy things even heavier and fine things even finer,” he says about a turning point in his thinking. It took Pinot and Chardonnay for him to understand this. Tim Fröhlich says he would never have recognized this with Rieslings, as all are planted in the best sites only. “I love spontaneous ferments when they work, but you have to be honest and accept that cultured yeasts may be better in some cases. In the end, the soil determines where spontaneous ferments actually bring out the best in the wine,” he says. In regards to new Riesling plantings, all material is selected in his own vineyards. He favors a genetic mix, including older clones with compact bunches. While these are more susceptible to rot, skin surface exposure to sunlight is reduced – from older clones – and this, he believes, also brings coolness into his wines in warm years. He relies on “an interplay of compact and loose bunches” and says, “it is the mix that makes it.” I am glad I tasted them when I did: once the final blends were made but not yet bottled. Tasting the GGs only in Wiesbaden in late August does not show them off at their best – here, however, I tasted their inherent luminosity and brilliance. Fröhlich has delivered a very fine, astonishingly light-footed vintage in 2022. The wines are extreme in a way, dry, stony, lean, intense, yet full of drive.

From 2022 Rheinhessen & Nahe: Rain in the Nick of Time (Sep 2023) by Anne Krebiehl MW

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Schäfer-Fröhlich

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