2018 Riesling Johannisberger Goldatzel Spätlese trocken Bestes Fass

Johannes Gross insisted that an enormous difference was made in 2018 by an extra week or more of hang time, but not an entirely advantageous difference. In contrast with many of his colleagues, Gross said that if he could do things over and if it had been possible, he would have been happy to have completed harvest even more rapidly than he did. He began picking Riesling before the midpoint of September which, he noted, proved necessary in retrospect in order to have some lightweight but essentially dry-tasting wines to offer. Wine of that sort, he insisted, would have been impossible less than a week later. “The need to harvest rapidly – and we do everything by hand – is one of today’s big challenges,” opined Gross. “Considering how hot it still was in mid-September, as well as from looking at the analyses,” he observed, “it’s hard to believe how much animation and brightness many of these wines convey.” In any case, two months after the completion of harvest he had already proclaimed that “I’m not in the least worried about [relatively low] acidity; not given my own experience with older vintages, the health of fruit, how it looked, the pH levels, or the aromas. I’ve learned a lot and dispatched a lot of prejudices over the past several years, and I felt no need to acidify or otherwise treat the musts.” Like so many of his colleagues, Gross expressed amazement at the combination of abundance and quality that 2018 brought. Most of the wines – including even the one identified as representing a “best cask” – were already bottled in early April. Short élevage, combined with screw-cap closure, may indeed enhance a sense of animation, but I’ve also observed how often the wines need time in the glass to reveal their full personalities.

I have noted in the past that Goldatzel is among the increasing numbers of German estates to have become involved in an active massal selection from old vines. The first such selections have returned from nursery quarantine and were planted in spring 2020, in a prime portion of the Goldatzel vineyards immediately out back of the eponymous winery. (For extensive background concerning this estate, consult the introductions to my three previous reports on it, focused on wines of vintages 2015–2017.)