2017 Riesling Scharzhofberger Kabinett

Wolfgang Mertes had his extra-large contingent of 60 pickers out in the vineyards really early in 2017: on September 21. “Even so,” he noted, “we finished relatively late compared with most colleagues. But these days,” he added, “you don’t have the leisure that you used to have, to spend six weeks harvesting. That simply won’t work anymore. In that respect, my predecessors had it easier.” (Mertes took over in 2005.) In addition to its being precocious, this vintage – whose potential volume had already been severely trimmed by frost and (in Graach) hail – required careful selection to avoid negative botrytis. Net yields were some of the lowest at the estate in the last 30 years. A decision had been made with vintage 2016 to offer the Grosse Gewächse for sale only after the end of the year following their harvest. I was shown and reported on all but the Josephshöfer (which I catch up on in my notes below) while tasting for my report on vintage 2016. But when I visited to taste the bulk of the 2017s, on which I report below, the Grosse Gewächse were not presented. And when I returned to canvass the full 2018 collection, there was unfortunately too little time for me to request a tasting of 2017 Grosse Gewächse alongside. Those dry wines that I did taste from 2017 were surprisingly soft – in the seven gram range – quite possibly a reflection of deacidification, but residually sweet wines boasted 8–9 grams. A vintage 2017 BA from Nies’chen and what Mertes reported were “very tiny volumes” of TBA from Goldtröpfchen and Scharzhofberg had not been bottled when I tasted the wines reported on below, and were likewise not shown me subsequently. (For more on the recent evolution of this estate, consult the introduction to my account of their 2014s; and to a lesser extent that accompanying my coverage of the 2016s.)