2016 Riesling Oestricher Lenchen Auslese

The Kühn team was predictably challenged and stressed by the fungal pressure of spring and early summer 2016. Having made it through though, without catastrophic crop reduction, certainly testifies not just to the Kühn team's diligence and determination but also to the fact that this battle can be won with biodynamic tools and methods. (Stating this is, of course, not the same as claiming that any given element of the biodynamic regimen has demonstrable effects.) Biodynamics is often cited by practitioners as a tool for encouraging earlier ripeness at lower must weights – in Austria, for instance, the Nikolaihof is the poster child for this – and the Kühns did begin picking Riesling already in the last week of September 2016. But harvest for dry wines continued well into October, and for the sweet wines into the first days of December! “Two thousand sixteen was a vintage with great stability from the standpoint of the grapes’ constitution,” explains Kühn senior, “so that one could wait a very long time [to pick] and in fact one had to, in order to achieve optimal concentration.” The eventual musts were marginally lower in both sugar and acidity than those of 2015, but as my notes reveal, what efficacious acids these proved to be! A high ratio of tartaric to malic such as exhibited in 2016 is arguably critical to the ultimate success of dry Rieslings at this address, since they both ferment to near-absolute dryness and undergo malo-lactic transformation. Peter Bernhard Kühn offers this summary of 2016: “The wines embraced the two poles represented by the rainy spring and early summer, then the hot, dry August and September; and the result was an incredible equilibrium and finesse.” That description is telling for the Rieslings of many German growing regions, although, as my notes suggest, I found gripping intensity and a lot of nervous energy in several Kühn 2016s and suspect that the dry wines will take some time to find their optimum balance.

Kühn senior agrees with the theory that vines in 2016, having accommodated themselves to water without end, were thus metabolically unprepared for the heat and drought of August and September. “We saw more drought stress in 2016 than in 2015,” he notes, “even though the summer heat and drought was more severe and lasted longer in 2015.” The effect on yeast populations was noticeable in both years. “We had really sluggish fermentations in 2015, and although the ferments started-up more rapidly in 2016, in the end those too took a long time.” In mid-August 2017 when I visited here to taste the majority of 2016s, the St.-Nikolaus was still fermenting. The 2016 Hendelberg and Klosterberg had only just been bottled, along with the Grosse Gewächse from 2015 – both directly off of their full lees – while the 2015 installments of what Kühn now designates as his “Unikate” – namely the dry Rieslings Landgeflecht and Schlehdorn – were still in cask. (I have already reported on the sensational vintage 2014 Unikate bottlings.) It may well be that proximity to bottling is one reason why some of the dry wines I tasted, formidable though they were, struck me as less impressive than their chronological predecessors. Another factor could be oak-influence. This is among the many Rhine Riesling addresses where renewal of casks is leading to oaky impressions cropping-up here and there. To what extent these will recede with time I remain skeptical. In matters aromatic, wood generally integrates, but where there has been a slight stiffening of the palate or drying of a wine’s finish I suspect one will have to live with slight blemish or handicap. In the case of wines with such strong, striking personalities and robust constitutions as the Kühns’, though, my overall reservations concerning oak influence are minor. And at this address, the diminished average age of casks represents merely a temporary phase.

August, 2017 also marked the unusually late bottling of a phenomenal 2016 Beerenauslese on which I report here, as well as of a 2015 Beerenauslese Reserve that represents the Kühns’ response to a concern both have voiced to me and that I have discussed in past reports. Their sweet wines, which have continued to be rendered via arrested fermentation, are ideologically – I dare say “metaphysically” – misaligned with what the dry wines have come to represent for them, namely “a completion of nature’s unimpeded work” encompassing complete dryness, completion of malo, and late, low-sulfur bottling off of the mother lees. “I debated about tasting this 2015 with you,” said Peter Bernhard, “but I decided I would rather wait a year.” (For more on the remarkable recent history of this estate and its evolving methodology, consult the introductions to my accounts of their 2014s and 2015s.)