2018 Riesling Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Spätlese

Wolfgang Mertes and his team began harvesting on September 17 in 2018 and finished picking the huge Kesselstatt vine surface, spread across Mosel, Saar and Ruwer, in just over a month. Mertes eschewed pre-fermentative skin contact in this vintage’s dry wines and practiced fractional pressing, both approaches taken in an effort to retain acidity, which in some instances was precariously low. “There was an enormous difference – as much as two grams of total acidity – between what ran from the press up front and the tail end of the same press load,” he noted. Mertes reported considerable incidence of botrytis, especially on the Mosel, but some of it was noble, and taken on top of what was already phenomenal concentration and high must weights even in healthy grapes, this resulted in a substantial share of nobly sweet wine all the way up the Prädikat ladder to TBA, much of it selected in late September. Mertes noted that nearly all of his 2018s fermented spontaneously, reflecting a gradual transition that this estate has been making away from cultured yeasts. Some of the 2018s are a bit too soft and low-key for their own good, occasionally perhaps betraying this vintage’s high yields as looseness. Fortunately, though, many fine wines are to be found in the current collection, and the nobly sweet elixirs among them will be – indeed, to some extent already are – memorable.

Any overall assessment of 2018 chez Kesselstatt must remain incomplete until one can factor in Grosse Gewächse. As mentioned in the introduction to my previous report on Kesselstatt, beginning with the 2017 vintage they will release their Grosse Gewächse only 24–25 months after harvest and 14–15 months after bottling. Accordingly, I am reviewing the 2017s only now, alongside the majority of Kesselstatt bottlings from vintage 2018. Other vintage 2018 Kesselstatt wines that I was not offered to taste include a Piesporter Domherr Riesling Kabinett feinherb and several generic bottlings. One important thing to note about Kesselstatt labeling conventions, especially in a vintage this rich in nobly sweet elixirs: The numbers prominently displayed on the labels of certain wines are effectively just nicknames, so the fact that there exists, for example, a 2018 Josephshöfer Riesling Beerenauslese #15 should not be taken to signify that there exists another un-numbered or differently numbered 2018 Josephshöfer Riesling Beerenauslese. (For more on the recent evolution of this estate, consult the introduction that accompanies my account of their 2014s, and to a lesser extent that accompanying coverage of the 2016s.)