2014 Riesling Ürziger Würzgarten Spätlese

Hans-Leo Christoffel’s wines began appearing regularly in the US in 1989, the same year I met him. His Rieslings from the mid- and late 1980s, not to mention the many older wines I later had the pleasure of tasting with him, displayed a consistency across vintages and a marriage of opulence with finesse surpassed by few if any other Middle Mosel Rieslings, so it seemed remarkable that this estate was at the time little known inside Germany. Notoriety among his countrymen came only in the early 1990s, and I recall Christoffel, in the wake of some especially positive press coverage in 1993, gleefully exclaiming: “Now, they discover me!” Fermentation was always spontaneous, in traditional fuder, and seemingly always arrested at just the right moment. (What few trocken and halbtrocken wines there were could also be excellent.) Christoffel credited the remarkable quality of his Rieslings in large part to his high percentage of old, ungrafted vines and their superior genetics (founded on generations of selection), not to mention their location in arguably the finest sites within Würzgarten and Treppchen. After the wholesale replanting of Treppchen – even as he anticipated retiring – Christoffel replanted his holdings without rootstock. In 2001 he entered into what he called “semi-retirement,” leasing his vineyards to Robert Eymael (whose Mönchhof wines are also reviewed in this report), presiding over their farming and over the independent vinification, in Eymael’s cellars, of estate-bottled Joh. Jos. Christoffel wines. Though Christoffel is now in his 80s, his collaboration with Eymael continues to be fruitful. A few recent vintages left me thinking that the wines would have displayed greater refinement and detail had they been rendered in their namesake’s heyday. But Christoffel has always been at pains to point out how much has changed since then. Starting a decade ago, he would offer a mock apology when I arrived to taste that “I can offer nothing but Auslese again this year,” not meant literally but in the sense that what was offered as Kabinett not only met the requisite minimum must weights for Auslese, but would in the 1980s surely have been gratefully received and bottled by him as Spätlese or even Auslese. At some point, Christoffel’s sites and the genetics of their ungrafted vines paradoxically became a limiting factor, and it would probably require a new viticultural regimen to achieve the delicacy of a 1980s or early 1990s Kabinett or Spätlese, especially if one were at the same time to dial back residual sugar to then-prevailing levels.

Christoffel is one of the many Middle Mosel growers to label Auslesen with stars according to their ripeness and alleged quality, but in recent vintages, on the recommendation of his US importer, some have simultaneously been labeled with the specific site names Kranklay (in Würzgarten) and Herzlay (in Treppchen). These two sites, which other local growers are also now mentioning on labels, are separated from one another solely by the tiny Goldwingert (long a Berres monopole) and the Prälat. Christoffel’s principal holdings in the Kranklay are adjacent to Ürzig’s sundial and nearly at the river’s edge. The 2014 collection from this estate is almost as abbreviated as that of a typical offering from its Meulenhof sister, and there is but one Auslese, a “three-star” Kranklay, reflecting the fact that only in its top parcel, and then considerably later than harvest for the other Christoffel wines of this vintage, was any Auslese even attempted.