2014 Riesling Loibenberg

Thanks to some recently-acquired vineyards and expanded fruit purchases, Rainer Wess ended up bottling a volume of wine from 2014 that was not indicative of the need for stringent selectivity or of the losses in yield per acre that he, like most of his colleagues, experienced. Wess also introduced a second press into his cellar, which he says “really saved me this vintage” due to the flexibility it introduced into his picking regimen. In the future, the extra press will be needed simply to keep up with increasing volume—much of it informed by additional Urgestein terraces, of which some adjacent to the Steiner Hund have just been planted with Riesling. (Wess is no longer bottling vineyard-designated Riesling and Grüner Veltliner from the Süssenberg.)