2015 Riesling Kallstadter Saumagen Spätlese trocken R

Dominik Sona, Franziska Schmitt and their team weren’t just able to put off harvesting in 2016 until October, they were anxious to give their Riesling grapes as much time as possible, picking the last of Saumagen only around October 22-24. To get a vivid idea of how radically different conditions were from those prevailing here in 2015 (for more about which, see my next paragraph), Sona reported that 20 degrees Oechsle separated the average must weights he recorded at harvest from these two vintages, a sort of spread that hasn’t been seen here in many years, perhaps not since such notorious sequential vintages as 1971 and ’72 or 1976 and ’77, in each of which instances the latter vintage was downright ripeness-deficient in a way unknown in Riesling Germany since 1987 and unlikely ever to return. Vintage 2016 is most certainly not ripeness-deficient – on the contrary. “I cannot remember another vintage where all of the seeds had turned brown and crunchy before we had to harvest the grapes,” reported Sona, an observation that reminds me of the seemingly paradoxical ripeness of Loire Cabernet Franc in “cool” 2014. Must weights were another matter. “In 2016 we had the opposite problem from 2015 and could barely harvest anything legally labelable as ‘Auslese,’ “ reported Sona – then added with a grin, “better that problem than the other.” Indeed, given where the climate seems to be headed as well as the notoriously heat-trapping proclivities of Koehler-Ruprecht’s marquis Einzellage Saumagen, Sona and Schmitt were thoroughly delighted with the moderate must weights and wide window for harvest offered by this late and, cumulatively speaking, cool vintage, notwithstanding the extreme heat that prevailed in August and September. In 2015, by contrast, not only had picking taken place early and in still very warm conditions, but for the Saumagen Riesling Trocken bottlings that represent a substantial share of estate production, it happened within just four or five hectic days.

As explained in my last report, the dry Koehler-Ruprecht Rieslings of 2015 were with one exception still in cask pending final blending when I visited the estate in September 2016. That in itself did not represent an unusual situation, since traditionally, blending and bottling for the dry Saumagen Rieslings has taken place immediately before the next harvest, but sometimes afterward – which may increasingly be the case given current tendencies toward ever-earlier commencement of picking. (In 2017 a new record was set in that regard, one that 2018 is now in the running to break.) Moreover, the top dry Koehler-Ruprecht wines are never released before 15 months (the R-designated only years after harvest). So Sona and Schmitt elected to not even bottle four of their five dry vintage 2015 Rieslings until just before Christmas 2016 – in part from a belief that waiting for cold ambient temperatures would be beneficial – which, given their early picking dates, meant that these wines probably experienced the longest élevage of any Rieslings at Koehler-Ruprecht since the 1960s. By contrast, the corresponding 2016s were bottled between late July and early September, enabling me to report here on finished wines tasted during my mid-September 2017 tasting session. The 2015 vintage here also delivered – indeed, given its precipitant and extreme ripening, practically demanded – what for this estate was a nearly unprecedentedly large crop of residually sweet wines, all of which I tasted during my 2016 visit and on which I subsequently reported. And it’s clear with the hindsight offered by having now tasted the full range of 2015s here that the really profound successes are in the nobly sweet zone, with drier wines conspicuously testifying to the fact that Kallstadt’s heat-trapping soils, and especially the huge radar-dish-like concavity that is the Saumagen, precluded benefiting from the change in weather that arrived in late September 2015. Unsurprisingly, given the conditions that prevailed in 2016, no nobly sweet bottlings were possible, and in fact there is just one non-dry wine each from Steinacker and Saumagen, though what a wine the latter is! (For a great deal of detail about this estate and its eventful recent history, consult the introduction to my report focused on its 2014s.)