2018 Riesling Wintricher Ohligsberg

“It’s going to be essential to pick before acidity drops, because warmer weather is forecast for the coming week.” So spoke Julian Haart when I visited with him on September 13, 2018 to taste his 2017s. Five days later – a week earlier than in 2017 – he commenced a harvest that lasted exactly three weeks. “When I go out and taste grapes and think, ‘Those taste really delicious,’ that means I’m a week too late to begin picking if I wanted Kabinett,” he quipped. “There’s no question that Riesling aromatics can benefit from a period of chilly temperatures and a flirtation with frost,” he acknowledged, echoing a long-standing view of his mentor Klaus Peter Keller. “But there was only a single night during the three weeks of our 2018 harvest when the temperature dipped below six degrees [Celsius = 43 degrees Fahrenheit], and people can say what they will, but under those circumstances it was completely irrelevant whether one picked on October 3rd or on September 27th – any enhancement [in aromatics] ascribable to temperature was far too little to have justified waiting. Whereas, for the sake of three or four days’ delay [in start time], we could have lost qualities that my wife and I spent an entire year achieving.” That having been said, fruit for sweet wines largely got picked first, so as to maximize acidity and crunch, while Haart deemed slight moderation in acidity and softening of grape skins toward the end of September conducive to subsequent picking for dry wines. “The weather was perfect,” he said of harvest conditions in 2018. “Just one day with rain, no botrytis. We didn’t get the rain earlier in September that made for such lovely botrytis in Graach and Wehlen,” he noted, “and for that reason we stopped at Spätlese. The only way you could generate a genuine Auslese” – meaning one influenced by noble rot – “was if you had a much larger surface area than I do [in any given Einzellage] across which to search and select.”

In assessing the potential of 2018, Haart reemphasized his belief in the importance of low yields. As he put it, whereas “the weather took care of yield reduction in 2017” – unfortunately, with a vengeance! – “it was up to the grower in 2018.” And Haart is one of those growers – the Webers at Hofgut Falkenstein representing another example from the Greater Mosel – who, despite cropping vines for low yields, farm them in such a way that deliciously complex flavors can be achieved at low must weights. Old vine genetics almost surely play a role. Refraining from de-leafing, thus insuring shading of the clusters, probably also helped moderate sugar accumulation – and it certainly contributed to acid retention such as very few Mosel or Saar growers achieved in 2018. Haart rented two small refrigerated trucks to chill incoming grapes. Extremely slow, gentle basket-pressing is likely another factor in acid retention, as well as in the admirable clarity that he has achieved in his 2018s. Despite his musts destined for residually sweet wine having harbored levels of acidity shockingly high by any standards, let alone those of vintage 2018, and constituting almost exclusively tartaric acid, Haart experienced virtually no tartrate precipitation in tank or cask. “No clue why,” he confessed.

Haart is also one of those growers who believe that dry extract plays a significant role in achieving a balanced vinous performance, and he pointed out that low yields may have helped compensate for the low-extract proclivity of 2018, which owes at least as much to drought as to the vintage’s large set of fruit. Still, levels of potassium are low almost across the board in 2018, even chez Haart, which goes far toward explaining the extremely low pH levels of his wines, and may even be a clue to the aforementioned absence of tartrate precipitation (as potassium bitartrate). Yet, with relatively little potassium to buffer them, the startlingly abundant acids in Haart’s finished sweet wines come off as animating and next-sip-enticing, never screechy or shrill. Whatever the explanations, it’s hard to argue with success, and Haart’s success in 2018 is brilliant. (For extensive further information on Julian Haart and his decade-old estate, consult the introductions to my reports on his wines from vintages 2014–2017. The 2018 vintage represents the first in which Julian Haart also renders Rheinhessen Rieslings – two of them, in fact – from the Nieder-Flörsheimer Frauenberg, but I’ll review those in my impending report on Rheinhessen 2018s.)