2014 Riesling trocken

“The weather never really turned cool after it rained, that was the unusual thing,” reported Helmut Dönnhoff. “And this situation continued not just for a week but for weeks on end. It was a challenge just to control the canopy over the summer. Riesling was the first grape to start ripening, and this was so early that in response, the population of drosophila—which are always around as long as the weather stays warm—just exploded. In the third week of September botrytis began to appear and we thought ‘uh-oh, this is going to get critical’.” The response to this situation was sanitary crop-dropping ahead of the main harvest in some vineyards, in the hope that the weather would cool and the situation stabilize, while eventually other vineyards demanded discarding of imperfect fruit at the same time that the good stuff was collected.

There was so much to discard and its botrytis-tinged, acescent condition such a threat to the health of not-yet-harvested vineyards that just disposing of the rejected fruit was a major task, and the Dönnhoffs carted much of it far from any of the local wine villages to dump. “We normally work with a picking crew of 28 or 30 people over a six-week period,” explained Dönnhoff, “but this year at times we had more than 50 working and we completed the harvest in four weeks.” It won’t come as any surprise to veteran observers of the German Riesling scene that the Dönnhoffs’ efforts—with son Cornelius as usual taking the lead in their cellar—were rewarded with a collection whose quality belies the difficult conditions under which it was harvested.

As at so many addresses this year, the Grosse Gewächse are marginally lower in residual sugar but significantly lower in alcohol relative to recent norms, and it will be fascinating to witness whether their attractive degree of levity will end up being accompanied by enhanced ageability. Intriguingly, Dönnhoff Senior suggested that he has been rethinking his judgments about where the greatest talents of his vineyards lie and may decide that, like Hermannshöhle, Brücke deserves to star not only in a sweet Spätlese but also in a Grosses Gewächs. “In fact, we left a portion of Brücke hanging this year with that partly in mind,” he related, “but those grapes spoiled.” (Back when this estate comprised fewer vineyards, Brücke and Hermannsberg were each routinely rendered as both sweet and legally trocken Spätlesen, not to mention occasionally halbtrocken.)

“The weather never really turned cool after it rained, that was the unusual thing,” reported Helmut Dönnhoff. “And this situation continued not just for a week but for weeks on end. It was a challenge just to control the canopy over the summer. Riesling was the first grape to start ripening, and this was so early that in response, the population of drosophila—which are always around as long as the weather stays warm—just exploded. In the third week of September botrytis began to appear and we thought ‘uh-oh, this is going to get critical’.” The response to this situation was sanitary crop-dropping ahead of the main harvest in some vineyards, in the hope that the weather would cool and the situation stabilize, while eventually other vineyards demanded discarding of imperfect fruit at the same time that the good stuff was collected.

There was so much to discard and its botrytis-tinged, acescent condition such a threat to the health of not-yet-harvested vineyards that just disposing of the rejected fruit was a major task, and the Dönnhoffs carted much of it far from any of the local wine villages to dump. “We normally work with a picking crew of 28 or 30 people over a six-week period,” explained Dönnhoff, “but this year at times we had more than 50 working and we completed the harvest in four weeks.” It won’t come as any surprise to veteran observers of the German Riesling scene that the Dönnhoffs’ efforts—with son Cornelius as usual taking the lead in their cellar—were rewarded with a collection whose quality belies the difficult conditions under which it was harvested.

As at so many addresses this year, the Grosse Gewächse are marginally lower in residual sugar but significantly lower in alcohol relative to recent norms, and it will be fascinating to witness whether their attractive degree of levity will end up being accompanied by enhanced ageability. Intriguingly, Dönnhoff Senior suggested that he has been rethinking his judgments about where the greatest talents of his vineyards lie and may decide that, like Hermannshöhle, Brücke deserves to star not only in a sweet Spätlese but also in a Grosses Gewächs. “In fact, we left a portion of Brücke hanging this year with that partly in mind,” he related, “but those grapes spoiled.” (Back when this estate comprised fewer vineyards, Brücke and Hermannsberg were each routinely rendered as both sweet and legally trocken Spätlesen, not to mention occasionally halbtrocken.)