2015 Riesling Steeger St. Jost trocken

The two Jochen Ratzenbergers, father and son, can claim between them a long, unbroken streak of excellence, and have worked side by side for nearly 30 years. A post-war refugee from East Prussia, Jochen Ratzenberger Senior’s father established this estate in 1956. Five years later, at the age of 18, Jochen got his winemaking start (“with an Auslese, no less,” he likes to joke), and over the years he not only honed his viticultural and vinification craft (without any institutional training) but also parlayed his affable personality and the proximity of the Mittelrhein to the then-capital Bonn into a stellar reputation, one totally deserved given the finely chiseled Rieslings that he turned out, a significant share of which were dry even when this wasn’t fashionable.

The Ratzenbergers relish their regional Riesling’s brilliant acidity, but have a knack for seeing that it is well buffered and enticing. Even so, these are wines that always blossom with—and at times positively demand—time in bottle, not to mention their being prodigiously long-lived. And among the rare practices that Jochen Sr. has perpetuated is holding back stocks selectively (“at times accidentally,” he quips) so that wines are for sale from vintages other than the two or three most recent. (Ratzenberger’s importer takes advantage of this situation, so not only are some mature wines available stateside, but some of the wines whose 2015 versions I have reviewed below are still represented by a previous vintage.) In keeping with the importance of time for Ratzenberger’s Rieslings, most are not bottled before August or September, sometimes not until the eve of the impending new vintage. It’s hard to name an estate that can beat this one for its combination of price/quality rapport in generic and village-level bottlings with precision and balance in the realms of Grosses Gewächs, residual sweetness, and ennobled sweetness. (Few estates can compete in their league with TBA or Eiswein.)

In 2016, the Ratzenbergers increased their acreage by nearly 70% (in the process becoming their region’s largest estate) by purchasing two-thirds of the Fürstenberg Einzellage, which lies two miles upstream from their traditional holdings in Steeg and adjacent Bacharach and, like those, consists of a steep southeast-facing side valley whose easternmost edge opens to the Rhein. The Fürstenberg (a.k.a. Schloss Fürstenberg) has featured prominently in the portfolios of other Mittelrhein growers, notably Jost, who will continue to farm there, and Weingart, who no longer does. But it will be a few years before any significant volume of wine from this site returns to market, as it is now undergoing Flurbereinigung, with the Ratzenbergers taking the lead in what will represent one of the largest re-terracing projects in any steep German vineyard.

The 2014 vintage was unusually challenging for the Ratzenbergers, but they certainly came roaring back with 2015 (and 2016, too, albeit with much-reduced volume). They began picking at the end of the first week in October of 2015 and finished by month’s end, with yields comparable to long-term averages. “Ninety or 92 Oechsle was as high as healthy fruit got this year,” reported Jochen Junior, as must weights largely plateaued after early February. “But that’s ideal for Grosses Gewächs,” he added, “with our long, spontaneous fermentations reducing the eventual alcohol further.”