2017 Riesling feinherb

Gut Hermannsberg apparently suffered some of the worst losses to the April, 2017 frost of any Nahe estate I visited. Director Karsten Peters reports that a moderate amount of fruit from secondary growth ripened adequately, but that the total quantities in most vineyards were so small it would not have made sense to harvest them in more than a single pass. Despite the tiny yields, must weights thankfully rose with restraint. Picking for Pinot Blanc did not begin until late September, and for Riesling extended through most of October, though (in contrast with so many estates this vintage) this clearly involved significant pauses. Interestingly, with the exception of the (lower-alcohol) intro-level bottling, all of this year’s dry Rieslings finished up right-around 12.5% alcohol.

The reputation of this estate continues to soar, at least in its home country – and rightly so, since quality has been both consistently impressive and steadily improving. As explained in previous reports, Gut Hermannsberg is the Nahe’s one prominent proponent of longer élevage and late release, with half of its Grosse Gewächse – those, namely, whose vintage 2016 installments I review below – now not being put on offer until 18 months or more after harvest. Incidentally, the team here seems to have shared my concern that screwcap closures sometimes overly-accentuated their Riesling’s tendency toward reduction and youthful tightness. As of vintage 2017, only their generic Gutsriesling continues to receive that form of closure.

When the former Nahe State Domain initially went private in 1998, it spun-off the entirety of its Lower Nahe properties – the best of which, thankfully, eventually landed with Diel and Kruger-Rumpf – while further consolidation and shrinkage took place in the decade before the 2010 founding of Gut Hermannsberg. So I was overjoyed to learn on my most recent visit not only that vine surface was now heading back in the other direction, but also that recent expansion encompasses reclamation from scrub of a prime surface in the Altenbamberger Rotenberg, a grand but nowadays underappreciated site that towers over the tiny Alsenz two miles before it flows into the Nahe, and as such lies less than three miles west of Daniel Wagner’s promising, recently-acquired vineyards in Fürfeld. (For more on the estate that is now Gut Hermannsberg, including its history, current team and methodology, consult the introductions to my reports focused on its wines from vintages 2014, 2015 and 2016.)