2017 Riesling Niersteiner trocken

The impressive new Gunderloch cellar and reception area are complete, offering Johannes Hasselbach long-desired space and flexibility. A refrigeration chamber for cooling grapes became operative just in time for harvest 2018, but “with a bit of improvisation,” as Hasselbach put it, most of the facility was functioning when the 2017 crop arrived. Much of the work area is built into the hillside, and no attempt was made to escape stark architectural modernity, but construction on the property also involved a thorough restoration and partial repurposing of the 19th-century and older buildings, including the huge family domicile. (I was surprised to find the former offices, now housing an expanded tasting room, chock full of furniture that perfectly matches the ancient half-timbering all around. It seems that the ancient roofs had to be replaced and replicated, so there was antique lumber to spare.) Among the expansions taking place here – in keeping with Hasselbach’s experimental spirit and notwithstanding his new cellar – is the installation of further tanks in the vineyards to pursue his dream of wine that is one with its place of origin, a project on which I shall have more to report in another year or so. And apropos of experimentalism and flexibility, Hasselbach continues to enlarge on his employment of ambient yeasts (his father, Fritz, relied on cultures); selective employment of skin-fermentation; utilization of casks (under his dad, Riesling vinification was entirely in tank); and lees exposure. Another welcome feature of Johannes Hasselbach’s tenure is harvest at moderate must weights to ensure dry wines of modest alcohol. (The vintage 2017 Grosse Gewächse register only slightly over 12% by volume, and, surprisingly, the 2018s follow suit.)

The vintage 2017 crop here was small, but not on account of frost or hail damage as in so many other German Riesling-growing sectors. Rather, the determining factors, explained Hasselbach, were poor flowering, summer heat stress, and the need to harvest selectively after the late summer rains triggered outbreaks of undesirable botrytis. Hasselbach attributes 2017’s formidable acidity to his vines having repeatedly shut down under the effect of midsummer heat and drought. And he shares a widespread view that the wines’ high extract levels could only have come about thanks to the timing of the August and September rains and consequent last-minute accumulation of mineral matter in grapes that had until then been starved for water. The collection of Grosse Gewächse that I tasted in November 2018 displayed abundant mineral traits but were rather austere by past standards, leading me to wonder whether that was an anomaly of the 2017 vintage, a function of the moment at which I caught the wines or possibly a reflection of Hasselbach’s adoption of the stylistic proclivities expressed by so many of his Rheinhessen contemporaries – namely, the sublimation of fruit in the interest of mineral character and of youthful generosity in the (alleged) interest of ageability. Bear in mind, though – as my recent re-reviews of the 2015s demonstrate – that with a couple of years in bottle, Gunderloch Grosse Gewächse can gain significantly in expressiveness and complexity. (For background on this estate and its recent stylistic evolution under Johannes Hasselbach, consult my reports on its vintage 2014, 2015 and 2016 collections.)