2017 Riesling Kabinett

While this estate’s largely young vineyards in Hallgarten were hit by August hail, their majority holdings in Hattenheim were largely unscathed by frost and escaped the worst of nearby hail, so that the vintage 2017 crop size could be considered close to normal. Still, Urban Kaufmann notes that at harvest “you had to carefully inspect each cluster” so as to avoid harvesting material that had been compromised by drought, hail or rot. He and partner Eva Raps had been worried not just about the effects of drought on their vines as a whole but especially on the many (both Riesling and Pinot) that they had only the year before planted. But carrying water to their infant plants and aggressively green-harvesting those vines that showed signs of stress got the former through the summer, and rewarded Kaufmann and Raps with high quality from the latter. “The acidity of our 2017s is analytically pretty high,” notes Kaufmann, “but sensorially the effect is pleasing and relatively mild. I can’t explain it,” he adds, though he is willing to grant that high extract might be a factor. The highest must weight at harvest (in Wisselbrunnen) was 94 Oechsle – translating into 13% alcohol – “and that’s enough,” opines Kaufmann, “because we want all of our wines to exhibit a filigree style.” (Considerable detail concerning this recent venture – which arose in 2014 from an acquisition of the former Weingut Hans Lang – can be found in my previous report, covering wines from its initial vintages, 2014-2016. That includes an explanation of the unique hierarchy of Kaufmann bottlings.)