2018 Riesling Ürziger Würzgarten Spätlese

The new cellarmaster-director of Joh. Jos. Christoffel and sister winery Mönchhof, Philipp Conzen, got the harvest started on September 17, 2018, and from the standpoint of relatively high must weights, that was probably not too early. And yet, not all of the wines taste thoroughly ripe. I can’t say whether or not all of the acidity in this year’s collection came from the grapes themselves. It’s hard, given the sensitivity of that topic, to draw out someone you haven’t yet gotten to know well on the subject of acidification. Certain wines struck me as a bit edgy, though I hesitate to disparage brightness and liveliness in a Middle Mosel vintage from which those characteristics can hardly be taken for granted. Conzen emphasized the healthiness of 2018 fruit, but based on the diffuse and mushy-fruit character exhibited by this collection’s residually sweet generic Riesling, there was clearly inferior material needing to be buried somewhere. The 2018 Christoffel collection continues to reflect a paring down of total bottlings that began a decade ago, but it features a new array of dry or off-dry bottlings, signaling an intention to attract more attention to its wines within German markets, whereas previously Christoffel had become an almost entirely export-oriented winery. (For the record, this estate’s legal title – reflecting its now long-standing assumption into Weingut Mönchhof, on which I report separately, as usual – is now “Weingüter M & C Management.” For background on the “original” Joh. Jos. Christoffel estate and its relation to Mönchhof Robert Eymael, consult the introduction to my report on their 2014s; and for information related to its acquisition by a group of Chinese investors and its evolving marketing direction, consult my introductions to notes on its 2016s and 2017s.)