2018 Riesling Lieserer Niederberg Helden Auslese

“Summer without end” was how Thomas Haag characterized the entire 2018 growing season. Like so many Moselaner, he began picking on September 17, but he didn’t finish until the end of October. That delay partly reflects how large and diverse his holdings have become, but more importantly, the sheer volume of fruit from 2018, together with Haag’s belief – shared by many fellow growers – that with stable grape analytics and continuously balmy weather forecasts, it could not hurt to take time for selection and to let certain parcels enjoy added hang-time. This year’s Grosse Gewächse were harvested mostly in week four, reported Haag, and the nobly sweet selections tended to have been harvested largely in the fourth and fifth weeks, free of botrytis until one gets to the level of Auslese Goldkapsel.

“Yes, the dry wines are this year drier than before,” confirmed Haag, which accords with the latest German fashion, and no doubt in part accounts for these wines’ rapturous reception among German critics. But he suggests that “you have almost a lightly sweet impression just because of sheer ripeness, and although the alcohol levels are relatively high, that alcohol is well-integrated and doesn’t show up as any heat.” Well, “doesn’t usually,” I would say. Apropos of degree of dryness, I have nothing in principle against Rieslings with scant or even absolutely no residual sugar (such as those rendered in recent years at von Buhl), but I am not convinced that this particular one-size-fits-all approach serves Thomas Haag’s Grosse Gewächse especially well, as they sometimes exhibit an austerity that, when combined with pronounced phenolic piquancy, borders on severity. Like many Mosel growers, Haag generally achieves his desired degree of dryness in legally trocken bottlings by introducing cultured yeasts to metabolize the last few grams of sugar. He seems to have dialed the current crop of Grosse Gewächse to between two and three grams of residual sugar, which left them at around 13% in alcohol. They were bottled in mid-July.

Those who have followed my reports on Schloss Lieser wines in some detail will realize that Thomas Haag continued to market a Kabinett trocken long after the VDP asked growers to eliminate that category (as well as Spätlese trocken), and that he is among many VDP members to have chafed under that organization’s rule that only a single dry wine each vintage, namely the corresponding Grosses Gewächs, may be labeled with the name of a top site. Haag has managed in recent years to get away with writing “Helden” as a stand-in for “Niederberg Helden” on what is in effect the second wine of his Grosses Gewächs from that site. Beginning with his 2018s, Haag has devised a new and clever way around the regulations using a play on the German word “Stück,” an abbreviation for “Stückfass” (a cask of roughly 1,000 liters), but also designating a play, a musical composition, or simply (literally) a piece of any sort or anything. The dry Kabinett is now “Kabinettstück,” the ostensibly lesser dry Riesling from Lieserer Niederberg Helden “Heldenstück,” and the corresponding wine from Piesporter Goldtröpfchen “Goldstück,” which also happens, literally, to mean “gold nugget.” As Thomas Haag is now a member of the VDP-Mosel’s board, I am not surprised that this has been deemed an acceptable approach, but it’s sort of daft that the Heldenstück and Goldstück bottlings are described (and fitted into the pyramidal hierarchy that is a recent German obsession) as “VDP Ortsweine,” since the Ortschaften in question – Lieser and Piesport – aren’t named on those wine’s respective labels other than via small-print mention in a descriptive text.

Regrettably, if predictably, I did not get a chance to taste either the Kabinett or the Grosses Gewächs from Haag’s small share of the famed Bernkasteler Doctor (for details about the marketing of wines from which, consult the introduction to my coverage of Schloss Lieser 2017s). Also missing from the lineup I tasted were the Graacher Himmelreich Grosses Gewächs and an inaugural Domprobst Grosses Gewächs that Haag had elected to delay unveiling. Still fermenting at the time of my visit were Trockenbeerenauslesen from the Juffer-Sonnenuhr and Niederberg Helden.

Readers should be aware that Thomas Haag’s are among those Mosel Rieslings most prone to exhibiting in their youth yeasty, cheesy, matchstick or otherwise distracting reductive fermentative byproducts. So an appearance of considerable qualitative disparity when you merely review my scores frequently comes down to whether a given wine was exhibiting such capricious and temporary aromatic distractions on the occasion when I tasted it. (For extensive further details about the history and methods of this estate and of the Thomas Haag–Philipp Veser team, consult especially the introductions to my coverage of their 2014s and 2016s. And for details concerning recent expansion, see the introductions to my coverage of the 2016s and 2017s.)