2014 Hommage

“It was really difficult to hold off harvesting,” says Sepp Mantler of 2014 in his vineyards east of Krems, “because precisely those bunches that had managed to ripen were afflicted with botrytis. Whatever actions you could take were bound to be accompanied by serious disadvantages.” Yields were little short of disastrous. Among the wines I tasted, and which constituted nearly the entire 2014 Mantlerhof collection, a Riesling Zehetnerin was markedly malic, a Riesling Wieland uncomfortably volatile, and a Riesling Steingraben and Veltliner Moosburgerin microbiologically compromised, at least from the sample bottles served to me in September. (I plan to revisit that last pair in 2016 to make sure those samples were representative.)