2016 Riesling Varidor trocken

“This was an exceptional year,” declared Karl Josef Loewen of 2016. “I’m reminded of how things were back when I started out [in the 1980s],” he observed in a slightly wistful tone and perhaps with a touch of exaggeration, “when you had ripeness without fear of overripeness or too much alcohol and it didn’t matter whether you picked on November 1 or November 15 because the must weights stood still and you just got physiological ripening. Also, in 2016,” he added, “I let a little more fruit hang compared with before so as to moderate the eventual alcohol and achieve greater elegance. And nowadays I favor two shorter canes instead of one longer one [for those vines trained to wires]. Contrary to what common sense suggests,” he insisted, “the vine is more fruitful the farther it travels from the trunk, but then the clusters are less well-nourished, whereas with two short canes you have better nourishment and healthier, more uniform clusters.” Loewen had raved with some justification about the “perfectly integrated acidity” of vintage 2015, but his high levels of tartaric acid at harvest in 2016 are also formidable – and part of that vintage’s most significant puzzle. He claimed to have no theory as to why so many growers struggled with plummeting acids, while in late October he was harvesting musts with nine grams total acidity that – even in instances of high skin contact, like his “1896” bottlings – bottomed out at eight grams in the finished wines. Loewen concedes that his vineyards’ having escaped the ravages of peronospora was largely a matter of lucky location and timing, but attributes having avoided late summer sunburn to his routine reluctance to deleaf his vines, and I suspect that thick foliage might also go some way toward explaining the grapes’ acid retention. As it happens, a few lots of dry Loewen Riesling this year underwent malolactic transformation. But in those instances, total acidity diminished only very slightly (since the ratio of malic to tartaric was low) and with no evident sacrifice in the final blends of brightness, focus or vigor. Loewen testifies to “almost no botrytis” in 2016 – that from the mouth of a grower who has long insisted that he is comfortable with rendering dry Rieslings from botrytis-affected fruit. (Personally, I prefer the clarity that he and his son Christopher achieve when there isn’t any.)

“Some of the musts took two weeks to start seriously fermenting, due to the cold late October and November weather,” observed Loewen, who cited some research indicating that even after the juice has been pressed from the skins, certain pre-fermentative flavor enhancements occur while the must stands. “The lees were exceptionally healthy and bacteria-free,” he added of his young 2016s, which naturally suited his preference for maximizing contact to achieve rich textures. In addition to the good news of 2016 being another very successful vintage, Loewen could also report success in acquiring a second parcel in the Thörnicher Ritsch that he has now replanted. (For extended accounts of this estate, its methodology and its vineyards – some of which Loewen has almost single-handedly rescued from unjust obscurity – consult the introductions to my reports on its 2014 and 2015 vintage collections.)