2019 Riesling Bopparder Hamm Ohlenberg Spätlese feinherb

“Ours are hardly the driest locations in Bopparder Hamm,” observed Florian Weingart in late summer 2020. Nevertheless, he was concerned that the consequences of a third extremely dry, hot summer might be not just low-extract but also acid-deficient, aromatically stunted and overly phenolic wines. Weingart’s concerns went beyond the qualitative consequences for the impending vintage’s wine. He had already repeatedly and effortfully carried water to his younger vines lest they suffer a much worse fate than mere temporary metabolic shutdown, and he has taken the lead in an ongoing plan to equip Boppard sites with drip lines. But things turned out reasonably well in 2020; in particular, acid levels were adequate. Weingart is among those growers who believe that the critical determinant of acid retention in a dry, hot summer is whether early spring conditions set the vines up to anticipate lack of water. (For a less anthropomorphic version of this hypothesis, see my overview of vintages 2017 and 2018.) Rain largely held off at harvest, so the fruit stayed impeccably clean. What wasn’t possible even with early harvest was genuinely modest must weights. Weingart admitted that his having labeled two bottlings “Kabinett” – both of which harbor 12.5% alcohol – reflected commercial expediency.

Nor was Weingart dissatisfied, qualitatively speaking, with his vintage 2019. Acid levels never dipped precariously and there was, predictably, the effusive, often tropical ripeness for which this part of the Mittelrhein is known, further amplified by the tendences of the vintage. Scrupulous selection was required, just as at nearly every other vintage 2019 German Riesling address other than those where picking was already substantially underway by the first week of September. And the net yield was concomitantly low. I tasted a majority of Weingart’s vintage 2020 wines and a substantial minority of the 2019s, but the omissions are in aggregate sufficiently numerous that I won’t attempt to list them. (For extensive background on this estate and its recent evolution, including its downsizing, consult the introductions to my account of its vintages 2014–2018. Information on the vineyards whose cadaster names Weingart registered in 2014 can be found in my notes on his wines from that vintage.)