2018 Riesling Alfer Hölle feinherb****

“From the standpoint of Oechsle [i.e., must weights], we should be ready to pick next week,” Ulrich “Ulli” Stein told me as we tasted on September 12, 2018, “but not when it comes to aromatics. So we’re going to try to wait. But we’re going to have to make special efforts to retain enough acidity. The difference in acidity from one vineyard to another is enormous – as wide a spread as I have ever witnessed. What’s more,” he added, “there has been drought stress that we didn’t experience in 2017, and that is going to make its presence known in some wines.” In the end, he did indeed begin picking a week after we met, and finished up Riesling in the third week of October (with Cabernet and Sangiovese coming in just after). “To be honest,” noted Stein, “having picked well into October mostly just reflects the time I need to harvest all of my vineyards. Really, from the beginning, the base quality in 2018 turned out to be about as high as one could want.” That said, he did not essay any Kabinett trocken as he felt that the style – specifically the “elegance” – that he associates with that Prädikat could not be attained. And there is an edginess and tartness to a couple of those Stein 2018 bottlings that incorporate his earliest pickings. In order to preserve acidity in his later pickings, Stein let up early on pressing. And the last roughly 15% of what was pressed from his holdings in Palmberg and Hölle (including from his distinct “1900” parcel) was treated to lees-stirring and is destined for very late bottling. (“Perhaps I’ll leave it in cask for five years,” said he of this intriguing and already very distinctive wine, “and maybe call it Steillagencuvée.”)

As an experimenter, Stein has been emboldened in recent years by receptive export markets. One sensationally serendipitous experiment on which I nevertheless – for reasons that will become obvious – do not report in detail below is an SO2-free 2008 vintage Brut bottled in 2013 and disgorged in 2018, whose base wine was a Klosterkammer Riesling, one-third of which was raised in a new barrique. It’s labeled “Erna” in honor of Stein’s late mother. “Second fermentation was completed to varying degrees,” he explained, “so each bottle is a bit different from the next. Some have eight grams of residual sugar, some four” – naturally, with corresponding differences in CO2 expression. Vanilla-tinged, overwintered apple and poached pear are supported by subtle sweetness (in a bottle nearer the eight-gram residual sugar mark) with an invitingly sachet-like sent of dried flowers as well as a smoky hint of black tea carrying onto a creamy palate with caressingly subtle mousse, and into a soothingly sustained finish. Acquire some of this rarity if you can, knowing that each bottle you open will represent an adventure! (For abundant details concerning this unusual estate and Stein’s formidable but today largely unfamiliar vineyards, colorful personality and unusual labeling practices, consult especially the introduction to my coverage of the 2014s, 2015s, and 2017s, as well as the tasting notes accompanying all four of my previous reports on his wines.)