2017 Riesling Varidor trocken

In 2017, the Loewens suffered total losses of less than one-quarter vis-à-vis an average crop. That was only partly due to the luck of farming sites that weren’t enormously impacted by the April frost. Carl Josef Loewen reported that some parcels did in fact lose most of their buds – although, in steep sites like the Laurentiuslay and Ritsch, as he put it, “’frost’ was traditionally a foreign word.” But secondary buds, he explained, eventually yielded ripe fruit. A further factor in maintaining decent yields was the relative absence of rot. At one time, Loewen senior was openly laissez-faire when it came to background botrytis, but in the course of the past decade I’ve witnessed a decided change in attitude. Loewen and his son Christopher’s approach in 2017 very much emphasized canopy management with an eye to preventing late-summer precipitation and humidity from engendering rot, and they consider their efforts to have been very successful. This helps explain why they only began picking at the end of September, late in comparison with most Middle Mosel estates (though, to be sure, early by long-term standards). And as is their wont, the Loewens harvested their rather far-flung 37 acres of vines in just two weeks. Fermentations were relatively rapid here this year. But Loewen senior reported that “it took several months before the young 2017s really started to reveal personality. And then, I have seldom experienced a vintage in which acidity evolved so much in the direction of minerality and not at all into the green flavor zone [ins Grüne].” Inexplicably, the unusually high levels of dry extract that characterize 2017 – a feature even in numerous sectors where yields were not drastically reduced – are not in evidence when one studies the analyses of Loewen wines from this vintage.

In addition to the wines canvassed below, there exist tiny quantities of Beerenauslese (from Thörnicher Ritsch) and Trockenbeerenauslese (from Maximin Klosterlay). Those were still on their lees in glass demijohns when I tasted the balance of the 2017s. There was also some question of whether they could be registered in their present state, as they ate up a lot of SO2. “It’s the first time in my career,” noted Loewen senior, “when there have been wines in the cellar that I didn’t quite trust myself to bottle, or at least, not for now.” Christopher Loewens was contemplating an eventual attempt to bottle the TBA without filtration because he observed that it might or might not make it through filter pads with enough wine left to merit release. (For extended accounts of this estate, its methodology, its labeling practices and its vineyards – some of which Loewen has almost single-handedly rescued from unjust obscurity – consult the introductions to my reports on its 2014, 2015 and 2016 vintage collections.)