2015 Riesling Krettnacher Euchariusberg Auslese

In the late 1990s, when first faced with some disobliging fermentations, Erich Weber demonstrated that the principle of non-intervention would take precedence for him over the principle of Trockenheit. Since then, the share of non-dry wines and their levels of residual sugar have been steadily rising, and in 2015 well less than half of production is trocken or even dry-tasting. (That share, to the Webers’ relief, increased in 2016.) A sizable number of impeccably balanced but overtly sweet Falkenstein Rieslings get labeled feinherb, which I’m tempted to say is slightly misleading. But as Johannes Weber pointed out, given that casks are now giving up fermenting with 50 and more grams of residual sugar, it’s important to distinguish those resulting wines (whether Kabinett, Spätlese or Auslese) from ones that stopped fermenting with residual sugar in the 20s or low 30s. In contrast with the trepidatious 2014 vintage, the Webers remained confident in the potential of 2015 throughout the growing season, their sustainably farmed, mostly old vines having been up to the hardships imposed by a hot, dry summer, and a pattern of meticulous grooming and fast reaction times insuring that each parcel could be handled and picked based on its response to the whiplash of weather that turned rainy and cool. They were done picking at the end of the third week in October, with results that include several of the finest wines in this estate’s history (even if there are also instances where rogue botrytis or sheer ripeness ran slightly amok). Two remarkable statistics: Only one Riesling dipped below 10 grams of acidity and not one of them came close to 12 percent alcohol. As usual at this address, the majority of wines were bottled in April. (Readers may find my prognoses of ageworthiness surprisingly conservative, especially for the sweet wines. But until quite recently, I have only cellared dry wines from this estate, and although Johannes Weber is changing things, until a year ago there was an unbroken streak within the Weber family of cellaring nothing, so one does not get the chance to taste older wines when visiting.)

In addition to a tiny parcel in the Oberemmeler Karlsberg (whose 2015 is reviewed below), the Webers have recently secured two additional old-vine parcels in the Euchariusberg. Expansion is needed not just in order to support two generations now working together, but for two other reasons, one worrisome and the other encouraging. “Esca is sneaking up on us,” related Erich of the fungal disease that has become a scourge in far-flung sectors of northern Europe. “Every year, more vines succumb. This is going to become the new phylloxera,” he soberingly predicted. Meanwhile, it’s satisfying to note that although in the three decades after I introduced tiny volumes of their wines to the trade, this estate relapsed into exclusively consumer-direct sales, since 2014 they have acquired an international profile, and their numerous importers had to settle for less vintage 2016 wine than they wanted. One other felicitous development: the circa 1900 Hofgut and two-family domicile depicted on the Webers’ label and more than half destroyed by a deadly fire in December 2014 is now well on its way to meticulous restoration, aided by funds for historic preservation.

For much more about the origins, evolution and methodology of this estate, and about their Konzer Thälchen sector of the Saar, readers can consult the introduction to my coverage of their 2014s. But it is worth clarifying the approach to bottling and labeling taken at this address lest they engender confusion. With very few exceptions, each individual fuder gets bottled separately, a practice that has been rare since at least the 1970s. So even allowing for the fact that the Webers assign Prädikat designations for every wine across a full spectrum of residual sugar, there are bound to be quite a few wines in any given year whose identities can only be disambiguated by referring to their A.P. registration numbers. That is why, where necessary, I indicate these as part of a wine’s name, and also why, beginning with 2016, the penultimate digits of each wine’s A.P. number will be rendered on Weber labels in a larger, bolder font than before. Over the decades, many estates have developed internal conventions for numbering, but a Hofgut Falkenstein A.P. number is simply assigned beginning with “1” as each wine is readied for bottling and conveys no further information. So while there happens, for instance, to be a Niedermenniger Herrenberg Spätlese Feinherb A.P. #3 from both the 2015 and 2014 vintages, these two have distinctly different vineyard sources and correspondingly different characteristics -- whereas if you want to compare that 2014 with the 2015 harvested from the same vines in the historic Zuckerberg, it happens to be vintage 2015’s Herrenberg Spätlese Feinherb A.P. #18 you seek.