2015 Riesling Piesporter

If reviews of his wines, including mine, are making 31-year-old Julian Haart seem the proverbial fair-haired boy, all I can say is that those of you who have been able to taste them will by now know that the praise is not (or seldom, anyway) hyperbole. Haart, along with his mentor Klaus Peter Keller and a handful of other growers, has become a leading advocate for unabashedly sweet Kabinett harvested from grapes in the best Riesling sites at must weights around or, in his case, even below 80 Oechsle, levels at which scarcely any Riesling was being picked at leading estates from 1990 to 2010 and, if so, only in rare vintages where ripeness was challenged, and then subjected to chaptalization. Two wines from Haart’s brilliant trio of site-specific 2015 Kabinetts were picked in late September, and the rest of his vintage collection throughout October, under conditions he described as “relaxed.” Low yields resulted in concentrated flavors throughout the range. “If the acids hadn’t remained stable, we could have ended up with some heavy-handed wines in the end,” remarked Haart, and while I find it hard to imagine any Julian Haart wine will ever fit that last description, those like myself who relish the levity of previous single-vineyard Haart bottlings that finished with hidden but efficacious residual sugar at halbtrocken levels will be a bit shocked to find the corresponding 2015s well below the legal limit for Trockenheit and harboring around 13 percent alcohol. To what extent Haart’s decision to let them ferment that far was influenced by imagining them in the mode of VDP Grosse Gewächse is hard to draw him out about, but he notes that having picked the grapes for those wines at 93-94 Oechsle, he did not expect such efficient levels of conversion into alcohol as in fact ensued. My guess (as reflected in my prognoses below) is that these dry “grand cru” bottlings will not merit quite such long cellaring as their vintage 2014 counterparts. As Haart himself remarked, “Another year I can do better with the dry wines; with Kabinett, perhaps not.” Haart cites Joh. Jos. Prüm and those of Grünhaus from the 1980s as models of what Kabinett can be when rendered from old vines in outstanding locations, and needless to say those are impressive models. “But I still wish,” he said, “that I could taste one of the Kabinetts that my grandparents made from their old vines in the Goldtröpfchen” - which he can’t, because they were happy to be able to sell every last bottle. This year’s brilliant Haart Spätlesen are an extension of his aims with Kabinett, featuring fearlessly high acidity, must weights lower than those of most grower’s Kabinetts, and not a bit of superfluous residual sugar. Breaking the unwritten rules of three decades has rewarded Haart, and us, with some extraordinary treasures.

Haart’s total holdings, more than half of which came from his uncle Johann Haart, now amount to just over five hectares (close to 13 acres), and given what appears to be his determination to continue doing nearly all of the vineyard and cellar work himself, it’s quite likely that he will not significantly expand. Planting any significant acreage also seems unlikely. His perspective on the subject: “I’m 30. Today’s young vines will only really be in order [ganz in Ordnung sein] when I’m 70.” (For an extended account of this young vintner’s ideals, methods and estate, consult the introduction to my report on the 2014s.)