2017 Riesling Steeger St. Jost trocken

“We got lovely late ripening,” remarks Jochen Ratzenberger Junior of 2017, in which he was able to hold-off picking until October, thus benefiting from late summer and early autumn chill. “Despite how little fruit was hanging” due to the devastation of late April frost, “it seems as though nature somehow compensated” so that must weights did not rise prematurely or in advance of adequate aromatic and phenolic development. “What’s more,” insists Ratzenberger, thanks to the cool temperatures “the crop was in rude good health [kern gesund].” I would say that the impressive results not only back up that last assertion but speak for themselves. That having been said, it’s worth noting that Ratzenberger is one of those instances where I conspicuously part company with the majority of my German fellow-critics, who in my opinion inexplicably underrate what are not only the most consistently high quality and most frequently exciting Rieslings of the Mittelrhein, but ones surpassed at only a handful of addresses in the far more prestigious neighboring Rheingau. Furthermore, it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone who has taken advantage over the years of this family’s generosity in pulling old bottles from its copious cellar could deny that Ratzenbergers’ wines exhibit age-ability remarkable even by German Riesling standards. And speaking of bottle age as well as of the Ratzenbergers’ generosity with cellar treasures, a reminder: their long-standing U.S. importer often makes available one or two wines from the most recent harvests; but their offerings – including those of Kabinett and non-Prädikat bottlings – consistently cover a wide range of vintages, sometimes going back a decade or more. The Ratzenbergers’ own price list, while currently dominated in the dry and nearly-dry sector by 2017s, only recently added the 2015 Posten trocken about which I enthused in an earlier report, while the category Grosses Gewächs is represented by the superb St. Jost 2015 and the Wolfshöhle 2013. In the realm of overt sweetness, five of seven wines on offer ex-cellar are from older vintages.

As explained in the introductory text that accompanied my review of the Ratzenbergers’ vintage 2015 collection, they are now the majority landholders in the Schloss Fürstenberg Einzellage, from which their first bottlings, both 2017s, are reviewed below. This expansion is triggering an increase in staff at what has until now been virtually a family-only operation; and a tasting facility is even being talked about for what is virtually the only remaining winery on my German “beat” where one tastes in a residential parlor. In two further signs of the times, the plan is to farm the Schloss Fürstenberg organically, and the site is being equipped with drip-lines because, whether or not their use will become a regular feature here (or indeed in other steep, austerely stony German Riesling vineyards), there is well-founded concern that getting young vines established could otherwise prove extremely difficult – as witness the almost relentlessly rain-free summer of 2018. (Unless otherwise specified, any references to “Ratzenberger” singular in my tasting notes refer to the younger Jochen Ratzenberger. For much background on this estate, consult the introductions to my reports on its 2014s and 2015s.)