2017 Riesling Winkeler Jesuitengarten Spätlese

“If things stay hot and dry we might be starting the harvest with Trockenbeerenauslese, like we did in 2003,” opined Andreas Spreitzer when I tasted with him in early August, 2017, “while if we get inopportune rain it could be like 2006 or even 2000,” which are the closest since 1984 that Riesling Germany has come to a disastrous vintage (though for completely opposite reasons). In the event, neither extreme was realized. Generally deep soils, and in the case of Hallgartener Hendelberg elevation, had kept the Spreitzer vines relatively stress-free during 2017’s dry, hot high-summer; while foresighted and meticulous canopy- and crop-management – coupled with a lucky drop in nighttime temperatures – kept late-summer rains from engendering more botrytis than could be handily dispatched at harvest by a crack crew. Even so, losses to rot were significant in such especially susceptible spots as the Winkeler Jesuitengarten. Other than those immediately adjacent to the Rhine, Spreitzer’s vineyards were seriously impacted by the August 1 hail; and that was on top of the disruption generated by widespread late April frost. Overall losses at the estate amounted to around 20%.

Despite all of my respect and admiration for the Spreitzers and their wines, I find the nobly sweet ones among them their least successful or interesting, with 2017 being no exception. But it is probably worth mentioning yet again that this opinion is obviously not shared by many of my fellow-critics, who routinely award elevated scores to the Spreitzers’ frequent Auslesen, Beerenauslesen, Trockenbeerenauslesen and Eisweine. (For further information on this estate – including its recent stylistic and methodological evolution – as well as on the recently expanded roster of sites it farms, consult the introductions to my accounts of their 2014, 2015 and 2016 collections. A correction: In past reviews of Spreitzer wines I inadvertently described some of their recently-acquired holdings in Hallgarten as being part an Einzellage Würtzberg. There is no such. The official name is Würzgarten.)