2016 Riesling Steeger St. Jost trocken

The two Jochen Ratzenbergers (father and son) experienced significant crop loss to peronospora but they had no complaints about the relatively leisurely course that harvest took or about its positive outcome. “Everything came in golden, healthy and unblemished,” reports Jochen Junior with his usual enthusiasm, and although the Grosse Gewächse were not picked until the third week of October – offering ample time for benefiting from the onset of chilly weather – their must weights topped out at little more than 90 Oechsle. As my scores indicate, at this point I find it a toss-up between Ratzenberger’s even richer but scarcely less clear or complex 2015s and their 2016s, which among the admittedly only four Mittelrhein collections I tasted, are singularly successful. I visited here already at the end of July, 2017. At that time all of the dry wines had just been racked and filtered in anticipation of bottling. But as my notes reveal, it’s hard to believe that the wines in question were suffering to any significant degree from their recent handling. This estate’s unusual and felicitous habit of permitting its U.S. importer (or for that matter others) to delay purchase until the wines have had a year or more in bottle, meant that I haven’t yet been able to re-taste any of their 2016s stateside. Even the 2016s that I review from bottle had only been there since mid-June, 2017, as the Ratzenbergers felt that their products of this vintage in particular would benefit from a longer stay on the lees. (For much background on this estate, consult the introductions to my reports on its 2014s and 2015s.)