2016 Riesling Winkeler Jesuitengarten Spätlese

“We couldn’t catch a break,” relates Andreas Spreitzer of the 2016 vintage, “or at least not until late in the game,” due to relentless rain being followed by unrelenting heat and drought. There are growers who insist on aggressive de-leaving and hedging not only as a means of maximizing ventilation in wet conditions but also of “giving the grapes a bit of a tan” when the sun shines, so as to toughen them against possible later overexposure during a hot spell. Andreas Spreitzer is having none of that. It’s not just that he considers meticulous, strategic canopy management essential to finding the right balance between ventilation and shading and thinks direct sun exposure of Riesling grapes is inherently fraught. “It’s also the case,” he insists, “that if you rigorously de-leaf during a wet spring you increase the danger that peronospora will attack the embryonic flowerlets,” a mistake he suspects that many of his colleagues made in panic in 2016. Not only were yield losses at this estate held to a minimum by vintage standards, the Spreitzers also managed to produce a full range up to T.B.A. and Eiswein, though it must be said that I find nobly sweet wine remains one relatively weak aspect of the Spreitzer portfolio, and conditions for producing such wines from 2016 were unusually challenging – notwithstanding which, readers will find that some of my fellow wine critics give mega scores to Spreitzer’s mega-Oechsle offerings, including those of 2016.

By the time picking commenced here in 2016, fruit for generic bottlings was already topping 90 Oechsle. Yet thanks to must weights for the most part remaining in a relatively narrow band and to a vinification regimen that helps moderate alcohol, the dry Spreitzer 2016s – picked from October 8 all the way into the first days of November – remain moderate on that score and feature certain bottlings of genuine buoyancy, which Andreas Spreitzer remains chagrinned (as do I) that he can no longer under VDP regulations bottle as village-level let alone vineyard-designated “Kabinett trocken.” That the Spreitzers’ ostensibly second-echelon dry Rieslings outperformed their Grosses Gewächs is noteworthy but neither unusual nor peculiar to the 2016 vintage. Altitude, ventilation and distance from the Rhine probably have much to do with this. But on the subject of distinctions between “Erste”- and “Grosse”-Lagen and the relative merits of the resultant wines, you can read my further observations in the penultimate paragraph of my general introduction to this Rheingau report. And apropos second-tier or “Erste Lage” bottlings, Spreitzer notes that certain parcels in the Oestricher Klosterberg – high up above the Lenchen and adjacent to the Hallgartener Schönhell – have been showing impressively in recent bench trials, and an additional site-specific bottling labeled for this Einzellage might be in the offing.

The trend here toward spontaneous fermentation continues, though cultured yeasts are introduced if it’s felt that the process is badly in need of encouragement. This year, Spreitzers took most wines directly from their full lees to bottle, so that when they assert that those wines “were only racked and filtered once” that doesn’t mean, as is usually the case with German growers, that they were only racked and filtered once prior to the racking and filtration at bottling. Two of Spreitzers’ 2016s weren’t yet ready to taste when I last visited them: the then unfinished Riesling Charta (with an interesting back-story) and a then still-fermenting Lenchen T.B.A. I’ll attempt to canvas those when I report on the Spreitzer 2017s. (For further information on this estate and its vineyard holdings, consult the introductions to my accounts of their 2014 and 2015 collections.)