2015 Riesling Kabinett

Wilhelm Weil has presided over one of the most remarkable success stories in recent German viticulture, but one focused exclusively on the top sites of Kiedrich. That geographical limitation is in keeping with the mission of Weingut Robert Weil since its founding in 1875, when, prompted by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, its namesake left his professorship at the Sorbonne, purchased the recently completed mock-Gothic residence of the recently deceased Sir John Sutton, and began personally taking charge of and expanding vineyards that Weil had begun acquiring less than a decade earlier. Expansion of the estate, gradual until the late 20th century, seriously accelerated in the early 21st. Weingut Robert Weil now controls more than 95 percent of the Kiedricher Gräfenberg (somewhat more than a quarter of which has just been replanted). The Turmberg, an estate monopole, has been reconsolidated, extensively replanted, and granted official status as a new Einzellage (a rare though not unprecedented achievement). Wilhelm Weil has also acquired major holdings in the formerly obscure Kiedricher Klosterberg. This was traditionally the “people’s” vineyard of the commune as opposed to that of the wealthy few or the nobility (“Gräfenberg” means “the mountain of the counts”), but as Weil recognized, an altitude and exposure that for centuries challenged the ripening of Riesling were ideally suited to a warming climate. Wines from the Turmberg and Klosterberg aren’t at all obviously inferior to their Gräfenberg counterparts, but Wilhelm Weil is happy with Gräfenberg remaining his only vineyard VDP-qualified for Grosses Gewächs status, since that mirrors a historical pattern of treating Gräfenberg Riesling as the estate’s flagship. Acreage elsewhere in Kiedrich as well as in Hallgarten supplements estate offerings at the generic level. Allowing for the appearance of vineyard designates from Klosterberg and Turmberg, the Weil portfolio has nonetheless recently been slimmed down, largely following VDP-wide patterns such as the elimination of Prädikat levels for dry wines and the restriction of dry site-specific bottlings to one per vineyard. Halbtrocken or feinherb bottlings have (sadly, in my view) vanished, save for two generic offerings.

Weil calls the 2015 vintage “grandiose,” and certainly some of his wines fit that description, as does a recently completed expansion and modernization of the cellar facilities. The high elevation, wind exposure and relatively fast-draining soils of Kiedrich’s top sites have proven advantageous again and again in recent years, and resulted in Weil’s having absolutely no worry that the rains of September 2015 would fall on already ripe grapes or generate problematic botrytis. But at the same time, the forests above these vineyards hold moisture that remains accessible to the vines below, so that even in as hot and dry a summer as that of 2015 (or 2003), they don’t seriously suffer. Weil also concurs with the account of 2015 that holds a dry spring responsible for having metabolically prepared the vines for what was to come. Picking began here at the beginning of October – early by the estate’s recent standards – and was largely completed by month’s end. There was very little botrytis, but enough to make possible the 27th consecutive Weil vintage to feature Trockenbeerenauslese, an unprecedented streak that began, not coincidentally, in 1998, when a then very young Wilhelm Weil assumed directorship. That was also the year in which the Weils sold a controlling interest to Suntory, whose investment made possible the estate’s remarkable renaissance, and from whom the family has since been steadily and amicably buying back control.