2017 Riesling Haart to Heart

Johannes Haart estimated his overall losses to the April 2017 frost at around a third, including a drastic reduction in the Ohligsberg and Grafenberg vineyards and a major impact across the Goldtröpfchen, a sector in which, according to his father Theo, the last time buds were hit by frost was in 1971. Harvest commenced on September 23 – earlier than any in this estate’s lengthy annals – but despite the low yields lasted for four weeks. There was no hurry, averred Haart, once troublesome botrytis had been “negatively selected” and left on the ground. The small crop led to a corresponding reduction in the number of individual bottlings essayed from 2017. There is not even a legally dry Gutsriesling, let alone a legally dry village-designated bottling; no generic Kabinett; just one wine, a Grosses Gewächs, from the Ohligsberg; and no Grafenberg Grosses Gewächs, due to the extreme losses to frost in that site (although Haart did bottle for a private client the 500 liters of dry Grafenberg that there was). Haart’s vintage 2016 Kreuzwingert Grosses Gewächs, incidentally, was finally bottled in late summer 2018, alongside the 2017 Goldtröpfchen. But he wanted to hold the wine for another year in bottle before presenting it. (There will be a 2017 Kreuzwingert – it was in fact still fermenting as the 2018 harvest got underway – but due to the tiny crop, no 2018. Not yet tasted is another wine that was still fermenting in late 2018: a 2017 Beerenauslese that Haart said will probably get sold via the estate’s price list rather than auctioned. For some additional background on this estate – whose official name was formerly “Reinhold Haart” – consult the introductions to my coverage of their 2014s, 2015s and 2016s; and for some details on the sites they farm, consult selected tasting notes that accompany those reports.)