2015 Riesling Forster Jesuitengarten Grosses Gewächs

Sabine Mosbacher-Düringer and her husband Jürgen Düringer started picking on September 10, 2015, concluding on October 2. But none of the results could be said to lack for ripeness, even if their best 2014s display superior refinement, clarity and complexity. The Mosbacher-Düringers’ sole disappointment with the vintage, Sabine explained, is that the heat and drought of summer resulted in a crop even smaller than the previous year’s. That being said, Jürgen reported that just enough rain fell now and then to ward off any vine shutdown. Sabine rightly pointed to the role played by high tartaric acidity in rendering the best of the estate’s 2015s memorable, though in retrospect I doubt that much acidity would have been lost had the grapes hung even longer.

Not for the first time (nor only at this estate), my impression is that the choices made by the VDP-Pfalz several years ago of “Erste Lage” (ostensibly premier cru) vineyards versus “Grosse Lage” ones (which correspondingly inform Grosse Gewächse) is too broad-brush or perhaps premature, since many a non-Grosses Gewächs at any given estate proves every bit as refined and complex as a far more expensive bottling that the VDP’s rigid marketing structure treats as if it were somehow categorically different. But as a consumer fated to be frugal, I won’t complain, since one way to look at this situation is as guaranteeing some outstanding values in complex, ageworthy dry Pfalz Riesling, provided that you, however reluctantly, avoid the Grosse Gewächse. The situation at Mosbacher is complicated (and the consumer further served) by an additional tier of bottlings priced between those from ostensibly premier cru sites and the Grosse Gewächse, but which in accordance with VDP one-size-fits-all regulations must announce themselves as mere “village-level” wines (Ortsweine). These are named for the relevant geological underpinnings – Basalt, Buntsandstein, Kalkstein – and originate in both premier and grand cru sites.

(For some reason, the estate neglected to show me their 2015 Deidesheimer Riesling Kalkstein, Deidesheimer Mäushöhle or Deidesheimer Kieselberg. I apologize for not having been alert to those omissions at the time and shall attempt to rectify them soon. During a regrettable gap in importer representation, no 2014s or 2015s from this estate have yet made it to the US, though that situation too will shortly be rectified.)