2014 Spätburgunder Kabinett trocken

The attribute ‘old school’ is often used loosely – but at J.B. Becker it is the only apt term. This goes for winemaking and labeling. Hans-Josef Becker, who will turn 80 in 2025, took over his home estate in 1971. The estate was founded in 1893 by his grandfather Jean Baptiste Becker. Hans-Josef Becker had already been working alongside his father since the early 1960s, training at the now defunct Graf Eltz estate in Eltville and in Geisenheim. Becker was one of the earliest post-war proponents and producers of dry wines in the Rheingau and has become a kind of cult figure – helped along by his devil-may-care personality and his disregard for passing fads and fashions. His desire to make dry wines led to yield reduction before many other people spoke about this, at the height of Germany’s technocratic heyday of the 1970s. Viticulture has long eschewed herbicides and the estate was certified organic in 2011. Becker farms 13 hectares, mostly in Walluf with some holdings in Eltville and Martinsthal. Seventyfive percent of plantings are Riesling, the rest is Spätburgunder and a tiny bit of Müller-Thurgau. In the cellar, time has stood still. Becker is proud to keep using the same pump he bought in 1976. All his Riesling is crushed and receives skin-contact overnight, sealed under carbon-dioxide, then pressed. The juice sediments for about 12 hours and is fined with bentonite to get very clear juice, which is then fermented spontaneously, either in wood or in glass fiber tanks, offering some oxygen exchange like oak but, according to Becker, at a slower rate. After that the wine is not fined again. He charcoal-filters botrytised musts because he wants the concentration but not the taste of botrytis. The Pinot Noirs are made in pressure tanks dating to 1952 and the 1960s, whereby carbon dioxide pressure helps to extract color and tannin from the grape skins. After pressing, the Pinots are aged in large Halb- and Doppelstück andStück. The man is as unique as his wines that are known for their longevity. Ever since 2003, all wines have been sealed with Vinolok. During my visit, I tasted the 2021 wines, the 2022 still being in barrel and not yet available for tasting, as well as some older vintages of Riesling and Spätburgunder. About 2021, he said “I had a very small harvest, there was much rain, and I had such problems with peronospora. For the first time in the history of the estate, I have not made a red Spätburgunder, just a rosé, and even with Riesling I lost 50% of fruit.” Readers should note that Becker makes a point of offering mature vintage releases. Becker’s wines are understated, bone-dry but balanced with extract, light but with ample depth.

Hans-Josef “HaJo” Becker’s approach to wine was revolutionary when he instituted it at his family’s estate in the late 1960s, and today it counts as equally idiosyncratic in some respects but retro in others. (I urge any readers not familiar with Hans-Josef Becker’s remarkable career and unique Riesling methodology to consult an extended account in the introduction to my previous set of notes, which were focused on vintage 2015.) The iconoclastic, indefatigable Becker, aided by his young, Geisenheim-trained wife Eva and his sister Maria, continues to turn out some of the Rheingau’s most distinctively delicious Rieslings and Pinots. On my second recent visit – prior to September, 2016, I had been away for a shamefully long period – I was given the opportunity to taste a few of the older vintages of Riesling that always constitute the bulk of Becker’s phenomenally extensive price list; as well as some products of his and Eva Becker’s continuing experiments, all of which I report on below alongside my notes on their vintage 2016 collection, which – once again, at the Beckers’ request – I tasted in September immediately ahead of their bottling. Note that most of the 2015s I wrote about in my previous report are now for sale, and the 2016s will be released in the course of calendar 2018. As in 2015, Becker credits his long-standing organic practices and care of the soil with getting his vines over a period of drought without stress, and the relatively tight spacing and generous canopy of those vines with resistance to searing sunshine such as prevailed in August and September of 2016. But while his grapes may have escaped sunburn the rain and fungal pressure of spring and early summer claimed around a 25% toll in volume vis-à-vis Becker’s long-term average – “which is good for this vintage,” he notes, adding “I know plenty of Rheingauer who suffered huge losses.” Becker opines that his preference for short pruning but then no summer crop-thinning helps guarantee concentrated flavors at modest must weights, and the 2016 vintage further conduced to those ends. That having been said, his dry Riesling collection tops out at around 13%, albeit without betraying any heaviness much less heat. “There was no possibility this year of Auslese,” he reports, encompassing in that remark not only any potential for ennobled sweetness but, more importantly for his purposes, a failure to achieve ripeness and concentration such as he deems requisite for wines he labels “Auslese trocken.”

Speaking of Auslese, among the experiments I tasted during my last visit was one that doesn’t yet have a name and will most likely have to be sold as Tafelwein, but for which Becker already says he has an exclusive customer (Wine & Waters in Berlin). Here’s how I described it the week before it was due to be bottled: Penetrating, spellbinding scents of lemon rind, fenugreek, apricot kernel, peat and deeply-toasted almond put me in mind of a superb vin jaune. On the palate, ripe fig and apricot display a succulence that dispels any notion this might from the Jura. In fact, it’s a 2005 vintage Riesling Auslese, 300 liters of which Becker decided to leave in barrel without topping-off. To say that he got lucky with the flor that took up residence there would be an understatement. The bright, savory finish is only marginally less penetrating than the wine’s aromas, pinching the cheeks and milking the salivary glands.

My September, 2017 session also gave me an opportunity to taste a mini-vertical of recent Becker Pinot Noirs; and since his handling of that grape is, if anything, even less orthodox than his handling of Riesling, a few words of explanation are in order. These Pinots ferment in closed, pressurized tanks for two or more weeks “which,” in his words, “makes for an exceptional mixing of skins and juice resulting in a lot of fruitiness and color, with a stability to go twelve months without sulfur.” Becker says that these tanks and this approach were “rediscovered” right after the Second World War by a Professor at the Weinsberg Wine School, and Becker’s father installed the estate’s first tanks in 1953. The tanks get hosed down with water if Becker thinks the fermentation is getting too warm – though Becker’s idea of “too warm” – just as with Riesling – is well into most other growers’ flashing-red zone. The wines then go not to barriques but to traditional oval Stückfässer of 1,200 liter capacity – like those Becker employs for Riesling – where malo-lactic transformation takes place on a Burgundian schedule, i.e. once the weather warms in spring or early summer. At roughly one year they are racked and sulfured, then returned to cask for a further 12 months or so. Becker tries to avoid filtration and to be sparing with SO2 at bottling. Even so, “these wines hold eternally,” he claims, adding: “I have yet to experience one of my Spätburgunder toppling-over.”