2022 Riesling Kiedricher Gräfenberg Beerenauslese

Robert Weil only farms Riesling on its 90 hectares, most of which are in the vicinity of the winery in Kiedrich and 9 hectares in Hallgarten. Kiedrich is famed for its elevated sites rising to 260 meters – especially Gräfenberg (230m), first documented in 1109, Turmberg (240m) and Klosterberg (260m) – mostly on mica schist. Wilhelm Weil who has been at the helm of the estate since 1987, has perpetuated a style suited to his sites: clear-cut, bone-dry and incisive. Non-Kiedrich fruit, despite being from Erste und Grosse Lagen, goes into the estate wine to save the limelight for the Kiedrich sites. The vineyards on the Kiedricher Berg have been farmed organically since 2012, but they are now in the process of certification, which is expected in 2024. Weil credits various aspects for the fact that he could make good wines in 2022: the loess and loam cover on his stony vineyards that have some water retention and the proximity of the forest which acts like a huge water reserve during summer heat and drought. Weil emphasizes that there is an “assimilation threshold” for Riesling where it slows down its metabolism, that there is a narrow band between vines being thirsty or dying of thirst. “In 2022 we did not only have the challenge of drought in the summer but late, massive rain in September.” But these elevated sites dried off quickly. Weil notes that his forebears who founded the estate in the 19th century knew that only about two vintages in a decade would ripen at such elevations, but he now counts himself lucky. The ventilation of the sites also means smaller berries, another benefit when it comes to resisting rot and allowing long hang-time. “Here on the Kiedricher Berg we have a relatively easy life, we can weather wet years, drainage was decisive, we could delay our harvest until late, we only started in the last days of September with base wine for Sekt, the main harvest happened in the four weeks of October,” he reports. “What you will taste comes across as from a cool vintage.” Analytical values back up his testimony: all the wine sits just below 8g/L of total acidity, and the average is around 7.7-7.8 g/L. Grapes are harvested by hand and machine, the latter only after poor fruit has been discarded by hand. What happens with the fruit depends on the style of wine: grapes destined for Kabinett are whole bunch pressed, grapes for dry wines are destemmed, crushed slightly and then pressed “relatively quickly. This preserves elegance and playfulness with a touch more of substance and body,” he says. Longer skin contact is reserved for single-site wines: “For us, skin contact is linked to spontaneous ferment in barrel. The time differs, depending on vintage and pH, ranging between 4-12 hours – and on logistics: grapes harvested in the morning are pressed on the same day after 4-6 hours of skin contact. What is harvested in the evening can have overnight skin contact, but this means that you have different fractions, which is interesting when you blend.” He says that they also employ skin fermentation: “In order to have a blending partner, but this is only relevant for 2-4% of the wines.” His dry wines are clear-cut, strait-laced, linear, of great precision and altitudinal freshness. They age brilliantly. His sweet wines are delicious high-wire acts. In 2022, tasting Turmberg and Gräfenberg side by side is a delicious delineation of two sites in various expressions. Two thousand twenty-two did not favor the development of botrytis, and where it did, it often lacked the requisite must weight. At Weil, however, the long hang time enabled minuscule quantities of thrilling wines up to TBA level. “We had the special situation that the grapes were healthy; later in October, the weather turned dry, and this caused the necessary concentration,” Weil reports. “You needed immense manpower, and the yields were tiny. In mid-October, the grapes slipped into a fine overripeness, and then there was a slight, light, pure botrytis.” During my visit I tasted the 2022 Rieslings and the 2021 Monte Vacano Riesling.