2018 Riesling Rauenthaler Nonnenberg

Given this estate’s long-standing proclivity for early harvest, it came as no surprise to learn that in 2018 Theresa Breuer and her crews were done on September 30, with the top Rüdesheimer Berg sites having, just as in 2017, already been picked mid-month. As there was no botrytis, no sweet wines were attempted. The difference in acidity of fruit from those top Rüdesheim sites versus the Rauenthaler Nonnenberg was even greater than usual this year, and yet wines from the former do not betray their analytically modest total acidity in any lack of brightness or animation – on the contrary! Breuer observed that “the unusually low pH of 2018s” relative to acidity “is especially pronounced in Rüdesheim when compared with the middle Rheingau.” Both the vineyard-designated wines and the Terra Montosa were bottled in early August 2019, almost exactly one month before I tasted them.

As related in my previous report, the Breuers have taken over the former Altenkirch vineyards in Lorch, from which their first wine will appear from vintage 2019. But the share of former Altenkirch vine acreage that they are themselves farming beginning with the 2020 growing season – all Riesling save for a smidgeon of Pinot Noir – will add only 20% to the Georg Breuer estate surface, a fact of which I was unaware when I previously cited the total Altenkirch acreage. Connected with this acquisition is a shedding of vines in Geisenheim that formerly informed the generic Breuer wines, so that their estate will now be almost entirely steep-slope. (Note that with the exception of occasional nobly sweet, Prädikat-designated wines, all of the Breuer bottlings are dry-tasting, and generally all but one – the “Charmes” – legally trocken. But I include trocken as part of a wine’s name only if that word appears on its label, which it does not in the case of Breuer’s vineyard-designated bottlings. For extensive background on this estate, consult the introductions to my reports that focused on their 2014–2017 vintage Rieslings.)