2018 Riesling Münsterer Im Pitterberg Grosses Gewächs

“The main worry with Riesling in Germany nowadays,” opined Georg Rumpf, “is that warm years will be accompanied by late summer precipitation, the way we experienced in 2011 and to some extent in 2009. But that was not the case in 2018. As for acidity,” he added, “that was only a problem in 2018 with our Burgundian grape varieties” (the wines from which, unfortunately, time constraints usually preclude my tasting). “We started record-early alright,” he had told me when I visited on November 2, 2018 to taste his vintage 2017 collection, but he then expressed amazement at how stable the Riesling grapes of vintage 2018 had remained. I was the one amazed when he reported that “we still have things hanging for Spätlese, for an Auslese, and for a possible Beerenauslese. And really,” Rumpf insisted, “this is not so very different from the situation in 2017. On the one hand, we started early to preserve precision and freshness; on the other hand, we held off to maximize ripeness and density [Dichte].” And notwithstanding my general reservations about late-harvested 2018s, that last-picked material was resoundingly successful.

Rumpf did not hesitate to give those Riesling grapes destined for dry wines something approaching their usual pre-fermentative skin contact. Indeed, he was convinced that this technique, in tandem with extended lees contact and his estate’s increasing reliance on cask rather than tank, collectively conveyed to his vintage 2018 wines both “structure” and textural allure that would otherwise have been missing on account of relatively low acidity and minimal dry extract. Whether or not that counterfactual is true, there is no question that the Rumpfs’ 2018s are qualitatively consistent with their string of successes in 2016 and 2017. Regarding harvest dates, a dry Scheurebe harvested in mid-September was already delicious when sampled by me less than seven weeks later. But alas, I have not yet revisited it, nor have I tasted a Scheurebe Spätlese from the Dautenpflänzer that was picked at the very end of October.

The Kruger-Rumpf holdings have been expanded in Laubenheim and Münsterer Dautenpflänzer, as well as in the Ruppertsberger Abtei, about whose exciting restoration I wrote in reviewing the first “Abtei” bottlings, from vintages 2015 and 2016. In 2018, there are four different bottlings from the sheltered and secluded slopes that once supplied Hildegard von Bingen’s Ruppertsberg Abbey, and much of that site is still awaiting or has only recently undergone replanting. Georg Rumpf is rightfully wary about his estate’s proliferation of bottlings, which now include a multiplicity of legally dry Rieslings at each rung on the VDP’s official “pyramid” – generic, village-level and vineyard-designated – plus an extensive range of residually sweet wines at each of three Prädikat levels, not to mention several nearly-dry Rieslings, two Scheurebe bottlings, plus those wines that time usually precludes my tasting: two Pinot Blancs, two Pinot Gris, plus Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. He’s also wary lest the estate, now at nearly 80 acres, become more than one family (especially a family that also runs an outstanding restaurant) can keep in a secure grip and on a qualitative roll. For that reason, recent expansion has been accompanied by the dropping of some contracts on vineyards in Bretzenheim and Bad Kreuznach. (There must have been more non-Münster juice in some of the Kruger-Rumpf generics than I had realized.) “What we’ve done,” noted Georg Rumpf, “has meant a shedding of warmer sites for cooler ones.” (For background on this estate, consult especially the introductions to my coverage of its 2014s and 2015s.)