2015 Riesling Rüdesheimer Berg Rottland

With vintage 2015, Theresa Breuer, Hermann Schmoranz and cellarmaster Markus Lundén have maintained their exemplary standards. In typical fashion, they started picking Riesling early, on September 21 to be exact, but manifestly without any lack of ripe, expressive flavors. The harvest continued through mid-October. “No question,” said Theresa Breuer, “the later pickings benefited from the really chilly nights that set in at the beginning of that month, while the days were sunny and quite windy – picture-perfect [traumhaft], really. And it was great to have such cold clusters and musts coming into the cellar. As a result, you have ripeness allied with brightness, coolness and precision. We couldn’t believe our luck when these wines began showing up in the cellar, it was so hard to reconcile their personalities after such an extreme summer.” But she defended her early pickings on the Rüdesheimer Berg with the observation that “in some of these parcels, including the oldest vines in Berg Schlossberg, the musts can rapidly turn very opulent.” The finished Schlossberg harbors just 11.9 percent alcohol, albeit marginally higher than other wines in the 2015 collection, all of which reflect this estate’s “enlightened” ideal of levity. The team here was also delighted to experience the first crop in some years that they consider quantitatively normal. And whereas 2014 was especially challenging for the Breuer Rauenthal vineyards, 2015 delivered the sort of floral and mineral complexity, animation and levity that made the reputation of this village’s vineyards, to which other contemporary landholders sadly fail to do justice. (For background on this estate, consult the introduction to my report on their 2014 vintage Rieslings.)

At our September 2016 meeting, Breuer revealed that she and her team have decided to no longer release their Berg Roseneck Rieslings along with the estate’s other dry single-vineyard bottlings, but to instead hold back the Roseneck for as long as five years! It seems that experience with a recalcitrant 2008 that really blossomed at age five strongly influenced their decision to single out that site for this approach. The 2014, which I reviewed in my previous report, has not been released, and the 2015 and subsequent vintages will not even be made available to taste until they have had a few years in bottle. Among other consequences of this approach will be the option of bottling certain vintages of Berg Rottland after more than the usual 10 or 11 months in cask, and the option of releasing the wines out of chronological order. And speaking of time in cask, there’s one more thing worth noting (though I anticipate elaborating on this theme when I introduce the 2016 German Riesling vintage): Breuer is among the large number of prominent German Riesling estates that have in the last several years inaugurated a systematic renewal of their traditional large casks. One result is that oak influence is cropping up where you wouldn’t expect it, but in Breuer’s case, the renewal is at a very gradual pace, and I have not encountered any instances where wood seems at all inhibitive.