2014 Riesling Piesporter

After training as a chef and working in two prestigious German restaurants, young Julian Haart followed his heart (and the common destiny of so many Haarts in Piesport) by preparing to grow wine for a living. However, he had not inherited vineyard land, so his domain had to start small and still is. Haart apprenticed himself for short periods to a who’s who of growers notably including Müller, Löwenstein, Schönleber and Keller, and to say that he was a quick learner will sound like an understatement to anyone who has tasted the wines of his early vintages, the first of which was 2010. Julian’s first Piesport parcel was acquired jointly with his friend Andreas Adam, and when the opportunity arose in 2012 to significantly expand his fledgling estate by leasing vineyards from his Uncle Johann Haart, Julian split them with Adam in order to keep total acreage at a level he could farm essentially solo. His ancient parcel in the Schubertslay, within Goldtröpfchen, is incredibly steep even by Mosel standards, and exceedingly meager in fine particulate matter by Goldtröpfchen standards. His farming of Wintricher Ohligsberg at last offers Mosel Riesling lovers a second interpretation (after that of Weingut Reinhold Haart) of this great site, one much more renowned during the Mosel’s late 19th and early 20th century heyday than it is today.

Even with the challenges to skin quality of the 2014 harvest, Haart had the confidence to give many of his musts 8-10 hours of pre-fermentative maceration. He began his work with just a few tanks, but by this vintage, classic old thousand-liter Mosel fuder had become a significant factor, where the volume of wine in question permits (since some lots here are very tiny). In contrast with his cousin, friend and contemporary Johannes Haart of Weingut Reinhold Haart, Julian has characteristically favored letting his dry wines come to fermentative rest where they will, which has usually meant legally halbtrocken. (Admittedly, as a VDP member, Johannes Haart is almost surely under pressure not felt by his cousin to see that dry-tasting wines from his top sites qualify for Grosses Gewächs status.) Julian Haart has insisted on a laissez-faire attitude to residual sugar less on account of any usefulness in balancing acidity or bolstering fruit than as a means for keeping alcohol in check. In 2014, given modest must weights, he was comfortable with letting his dry wines ferment well into officially trocken territory if that were nature’s whim; and ambient yeasts – as was the case generally this vintage – seemed only too happy to oblige. Warm, well-watered conditions probably promoted an abundant, healthy population of yeasts, just as they did of fungal and insect pests. All of his fermentations ended by Christmas and that fact, along with a shortage of 2013s, prompted bottling dates in May and June, a little ahead of those in past vintages. (Like Andreas Adam, Julian Haart has elected to dispense with the designation “trocken” even on labels of wines that qualify for it.) In parallel with his dry-tasting Rieslings, Haart is a passionate proponent of delicate and unabashedly sweet Kabinett, a category in which he especially showcases his Schubertslay parcel. To achieve the requisite delicacy, one has to hang a relatively large crop so that must weights don’t get too high; and Haart insists that only old vines with tiny berries – which he is lucky to have in each of his Einzellagen – can deliver sufficient flavor or slate slope personality under those conditions.

"We had botrytis and acetification problems, but to a much smaller extent than many other areas," Haart claimed of the Piesport-Wintrich sector. He began picking in the last day of September and was finished in mid-October, but suspended the harvest for more than a week in between during which he judged it simply too rainy to continue. "We harvested 60 hectoliters per hectare," he related, "and I'd say probably 80 was hanging out there, of which 20 got left behind. That puts 2014 quantitatively well ahead of 2013, so I certainly can't complain given how well the wines turned out." Indeed, it’s already becoming evident that Riesling lovers internationally will give thanks and line up for any enhanced volume of Julian Haart wine that that may become available.