2014 Riesling Kabinett

Just to recap a bit of history, the former Nahe State Domaine (Staatliche Weinbaudomäne Niederhausen-Schlossböckelheim – “Die Domäne” for short) became one of the Nahe’s foremost wine growing establishments within only a few years of its creation in 1902. It then consisted of largely barren slopes along the Nahe and a huge adjacent former copper mine, to which is owed the vineyard name Schlossböckelheimer Kupfergrube. By the 1960s and 1970s, under the direction of Karl-Heinz Sattelmayer, this had become the leading estate of its region and had vast holdings not only throughout the immediate Niederhausen-Schlossböckelheim area, but also in the Traiser Bastei and nearby, along the Alsenz River at Altenbamberg and Ebernburg. With Sattelmayer’s 1985 retirement, quality deteriorated, and the challenge of trying to manage and hand-harvest a huge surface area became the sort of problem it was for so many once unrivaled German wine estates, including the two other largest on the Nahe, August Anheuser and von Plettenberg. A decade later, a wine lover from the Pfalz purchased and downsized the estate, running it under the rather colorless name of “Gutsverwaltung Niederhausen Schlossböckelheim.” While there was eventually an uptick in quality, the operation continued to struggle. In 2010 it was acquired by two new wine lovers, Christine Dinse and Jens Reidel, who hired young but seasoned Karsten Peter (brother-in-law of Tim Fröhlich) as director and Philipp Wolf as vineyard manager, renaming the estate “Gut Hermannsberg” for its most famous monopole, the Niederhäuser Hermannsberg. Through a cordial accommodation and appropriate leasing arrangements with Helmut Dönnhoff, Gut Hermannsberg agreed not to farm or make wine from their substantial share of Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle, control of which fell to Dönnhoff, who in turn ceded to Gut Hermannsberg control of his portion of Schlossböckelheimer Kupfergrube. From the first vintage under the new team, it became evident that Gut Hermannsberg would rapidly become (or, if you will, regain its place as) one of the top estates of the Nahe, and vintage 2014 has not halted progress in that direction. Ambitiously, the decision was made two years ago that many of the dry wines would spend more than a year in cask and then some months in bottle before release. So beginning with the 2014 vintage, I shall be reviewing certain wines on a correspondingly delayed basis from bottle, or, depending on how they are showing when I visit the estate, from cask. In addition to the relatively short roster of outstanding sites that currently remain subject to single-vineyard bottling at this address, Gut Hermannsberg will begin making wine from the Schlossböckelheimer Felsenberg in 2017 after the lapse of a farming lease returns it to their control. There is some inaugural Sekt base wine from 2014 that won’t see the market in disgorged form for at least three years.

Rigorous pre-harvest negative selection to remove inferior material helped in many instances to enhance the quality of what was picked for keeps, and an enhanced crew was a further assist. While great residually sweet Rieslings are part of the revival underway here, in 2014, despite having picked grapes for Spätlese, Auslese and Beerenauslese, the team decided that none of them were of a quality that merited dedicated estate-bottling and release. The organization of the cellar here is highly conducive to quality control in a challenging vintage. The substantial share of wine that is raised in tanks can take advantage of a huge array of these in different sizes, so initial vinification is often parcel-by-parcel in small lots whose evolution can then be intently followed. “I want not to pick too late, so that we can convey the terrific complexity from our sites while retaining freshness,” remarked Karsten Peter.