2017 Riesling Oestricher Doosberg Grosses Gewächs

Peter Bernhard Kühn emphasized not just how early his vines budded out in 2018 thanks to the combination of ample winter precipitation and precocious March warmth, but also how rapid was their subsequent evolution. “In a single week,” he reported, “the vines went from first opening their ‘eyes’ to unfurling a trio of leaflets, a process that usually takes a good 12 to 14 days. And from then on, the year gave us no pause.” Canopy management became unusually demanding and simultaneously pressing. But Kühn looked on the bright side: “During my time at [Domaine] Arlaud,” he related, “Hervé Arlaud told me: ‘When the vines grow this rapidly, it means they have the vitality to withstand fungal infections and remain healthy.’” Of course, the health of vines and clusters in 2021 could also be attributed to near-endless heat and summer sunshine. But it was heat during flowering, noted Kühn, that led to extreme millerandage, with its eventual benefits of well-ventilated clusters and concentrated berries. The downside of heat and summer drought was of course the risk of shutdown or, in the case of young vines, lasting harm, and the Kühns reported having carried water like crazy to sustain their contingent of the latter. “But in general,” Kühn observed, “the relatively deeply layered loess and loam soils that typify Oestrich were advantageously water-retentive. And we had the good luck of some rainfall at opportune moments.”

Harvest here occupied 30 people for six weeks beginning in the last days of August (for Sekt Riesling), with picking taking place almost exclusively in the morning while a bit of the night’s welcome chill still clung to the grape clusters. Must weights were surprisingly moderate given the overall precocity and rapid tempo of the growing season. “We harvested our Lenchen Spätlese at the same time that we were picking for top dry wines,” explained Kühn, “and then sorted those grapes to reach all the way up to TBA.” And not in minuscule amounts, either: “There was an interesting break relative to harvest,” he noted, “insofar as what was picked during the first half fermented through by the end of December – with malolactic transformation taking place along the way – whereas the musts from later fermented much more quietly and slowly” – well into 2019, in fact, though there, too, malolactic largely finished ahead of alcoholic fermentation. “We ended up bottling wines from that first group in April or the beginning of May,” he added, “a bit earlier than usual.” But everything else was destined for this estate’s usual long élevage, and Kühn was not yet ready when I last visited in September 2019 to show me his Hendelberg or Klosterberg from 2018. (For a wealth of background on this estate, its recent history, and its evolving methodology, consult the introductions to my previous reports covering vintages 2014–2017.)