2017 Weissburgunder Traiser Kaffel trocken

Birgitta Crusius – with whom I tasted once again in husband Peter’s absence – reported losses to the April, 2017 frost of up to 30% in top sites, while in the lower echelons of the estate’s Riesling and non-Riesling offerings losses were minimal. “Pretty much everything had to be scrupulously selected,” she explains, due to some presence of botrytis as well as of less-ripe fruit from post-frost secondary growth. But since the weather played along after late September, much of that latter fruit could be allowed to hang longer and picked in a second pass on the vineyards. “A big difference vis-à-vis 2016,” notes Crusius, “is that in 2017 we were able to pick a considerable number of nobly sweet wines,” albeit in small quantities. Overall, the Crusius 2017 collection wears its ripeness on its sleeve. The wines are frequently surprisingly broad and soft by vintage standards, owing to a combination of relatively full body; an unusually high degree of tartrate precipitation; and an occasional influence of malo-lactic. Fortunately, though, the best of them incorporate cut and brightness. “The acids were a bit surprise,” relates Crusius. “Initially, we thought we were going to have to do something about them” i.e. de-acidify (a step not infrequently taken at this address), “but that turned out not to be necessary.” The impression of palpably high extract, so often experienced from 2017 vintage Nahe Rieslings, is also little evidenced in the present collection, though insofar as the wines exhibit a bit of looseness, that certainly renders them amenable to appreciation in their youth. I often suspect that a surprising commonality of aromatics and fruit character among Crusius bottlings – pronounced in 2017, favoring tropical fruits in the nobly sweet wines, Golden Delicious apple in the rest – might owe as much or more to the yeast cultures that are employed as to sheer ripeness of raw material.

Several of the estate’s wines from Burgundian varieties, as well as their Grüner Veltliner and intro-level dry Riesling, were missing from the line-up presented to me and I did not make an effort to rectify those omissions. Incidentally, after two vintages in which there was a cuvée labeled “Untitled” – composed of ostensibly top material from each of the estate’s Grosse Gewächse – that bottling has evidently been scrubbed from the line-up. This decision, I suspect, owes something to daughter Judith Crusius who, in keeping with her recent academic experience, is now assuming a significant marketing role at her family’s estate – while sister Rebecca, recently graduated from Geisenheim, has become involved in the cellar. (For background on this estate – which I have been visiting annually since 1984 – consult the introduction to my review of its 2014s. For an explanation of some important recent label changes at this address, consult my report on the 2015s. And concerning the often striking deviation of my assessments from those of my German journalistic colleagues, consult the introduction to my report on the Crusius 2016s.)