2017 Riesling trocken

Christian Hermann was not totally shocked on discovering that April frost had stricken even buds in the Erdener Prälat, because this sheltered site, traditionally deemed untouchable, had been grazed on previous 21st-century occasions. Overall losses to frost in 2017 (especially severe in Treppchen), compounded by the requisite selectivity at harvest, resulted in nearly half of a normal crop. Hermann and his crew began picking on September 25, but by selecting for noble botrytis, not by starting in on the normal range of wines. “Despite already advanced must weights,” related Hermann, “I was astonished at how high the acidity still was across the board at that point, and especially in higher-elevation sites that are not just cooler but were also spared the frost and thus had a normal crop hanging.” Being known especially for his nobly sweet wines, he sensed an unusual opportunity. “In those first days,” he recalled, “we picked two fuders’ worth of Treppchen that became gold capsule Auslese. Two thousand liters at well over the minimum must weight for BA! Many years, we’re lucky to get two hundred liters like that. Then we turned our attention to Kabinett. It was halfway through harvest before we picked any grapes for our dry Gutsriesling or our ‘Riesling H.’” To be sure, by then acid levels had come down, and Hermann eschewed deacidification across the board. “Since we ferment very cool and the fermentations tend to be long,” he pointed out, “most of the wines ended up shedding a gram and a half of acidity just in the form of tartrate precipitation.” But finished acids were still high by his standards, which struck me as advantageous at all levels, most obviously so in upper Prädikats. “What’s lovelier than thick [dicke] sweet wines with really good acidity?” asked Hermann rhetorically, adding that “never before in my career have I had this year’s combined acid and Oechsle levels.” Given that botrytis pressure kept mounting, Hermann ended up completing harvest in just three weeks, in the course of which he selected out no fewer than five 25–50-liter lots of Trockenbeerenauslesen (four of them “gold capsule” – though that designation reflects common practice at this address), which were run in March through a specialized tiny filter. (Some powerful yeast cultures must have been at work for legal vinosity to have been reached that rapidly!)

Given 2017’s drastically diminished yields, Hermann was very happy to have added nearly five acres of vines to his estate between 2016 and 2017 (for a total of 32). And beginning with 2018, he has added additional old vines in Kinheimer Hubertuslay as well as a prime parcel in Piesporter Goldtröpfchen. (In a sort of practice run, he vinified a 2017 Goldtröpfchen from contract fruit, which I have reviewed below.) There are quite a few Hermann 2017s that I did not taste, four from Treppchen alone: a nearly dry Alte Reben, a “regular” Kabinet, a Spätlese and a TBA. I was also unable to taste an Ürziger Würzgarten TBA or a non-gold-capsule Prälat TBA. Most lamentably, I missed out on the 2017 Ürziger Würzgarten In der Kranklei Riesling Spätlese Goldkapsel Alte Reben, a wine behind whose long name unfortunately stand very few bottles. (For more about this estate, consult especially the introductions to my reports on their 2014s and 2015s. Note that I have moved coverage of Hermann’s exciting legally distinct joint project with Stefan Steinmetz – which currently encompasses two wines – to a separate section that will appear in my next report under the heading “Steinmetz und Hermann.”)