2018 Gelber Muskateller

As mentioned in my general introduction to this Pfalz report, Hansjörg Rebholz associates highly heterogeneous maturation with a vintage like 2018 in which drought stress threatens. He reported having taken more than 500 (hundred-berry-each) grape samples in the course of the 2018 harvest en route to determining the optimum moment for picking each parcel. Rebholz ended up not picking Riesling in his top sites until the first week in October, having been convinced that even in terms of must weight, let alone ripeness of flavor, they needed that long. (It must be borne in mind that the Southern Pfalz is typically at least a week behind the Mittelhaardt, due primarily to its higher elevation.) As a result, those Rieslings hung through a light frost, followed by chilly days, something that many growers consider optimum for developing aromatic finesse in Riesling. “But face it,” Rebholz remarked, “you aren’t going to make a vintage 2016 out of vintage 2018, because in order to have physiological ripeness and enough substance, your grapes were going to have somewhat more sugar.” Adding to the eventual alcohol that this entails, was Rebholz’s conviction that “one of the greatest and most prevalent errors that growers made in 2018 was to leave behind any significant residual sugar [in their dry wines], because given the ripeness of flavor and the high glycerin content in 2018, four grams of sugar was going to taste like seven.” He doesn’t attribute that phenomenon to lower acidity, since (as I have explained in my introductory accounts of this vintage) while total acidities might be moderate, the acidity that is present is almost entirely of the more efficacious tartaric rather than malic sort; while pH values, due to low extract, are comparatively high for the level of acidity. Rebholz’s vintage 2018 Riesling Grosse Gewächse all ended up with 13–13.5% alcohol, while the Pinot Blancs weigh in at 13.5–14%.

Rebholz not only practiced significant crop-thinning in 2018 but is one of those relatively few growers to emphasize the role of selectivity at harvest. While fruit was rot-free, by no means all of it met his exacting standards. “Typically,” he explained, “it was a question of tasting to determine whether the grapes on any given vine could be harvested at all,” or whether instead that vine had suffered too much from drought or was in the early stages of affliction with esca, which Rebholz said is claiming easily 5% of his old vines each year. (In 2018, water had to be carried repeatedly to his young, interplanted replacement vines.) Prompted in part by the sheer size of the anticipated 2018 crush – here is one grower whom that did not take by surprise – Rebholz acquired a second press, one of the increasingly popular vertical “basket” sort, capable of generating especially clean, clear juice, albeit at a slow pace. In contrast with a great many growers, he operated in 2018 with his usual day or so of pre-fermentative skin contact, an approach which he thinks helps explain why his ferments – which are routinely spontaneous – were relatively rapid and complete. (For much more about this estate and its vineyards, consult the introductions to my coverage of their 2014–2017 vintages. My tasting notes from the 2014 and 2015 vintages harbor especially much detail concerning their vineyard sources and diverse geological underpinnings.)