2014 Riesling trocken Alte Reben

Cecilia Jost is very much in charge of things here now, while her father Peter Jost, who made this Bacharach estate’s reputation, seems willing to serve as trusted, seasoned advisor and second-in-command. “You had to remove rot and acescence, which was a challenge,” Jost admitted of her Mittelrhein harvest. “But if you didn’t pick very early,” she insisted, voicing a distinctly minority opinion, “then you had to wait out the rain. We didn’t finish until the beginning of November, and even though the grapes did not gain more than two degrees Oechsle over the entire month of October, the difference in flavor was so marked that you really had to conclude there would have been no good reason to harvest earlier.”

Mittelrhein fruit that was picked before late October was lightly de-acidified as must. “Whereas usually,” Jost continued, “we have to struggle to achieve levity and clarity in our Rheingau wines and these characteristics come more easily in the Mittelrhein, this year it was the other way around. Even though our vineyards in Walluf are, quite candidly, relatively flat and water-retentive, we brought in nearly all the fruit with less than 5% botrytis and ideal clarity, whereas in the Mittelrhein we had to sort without end” and nobly sweet wine was deemed out of the question. One reason for this seemingly odd 2014 role reversal of Rheingau and Mittelrhein, Jost suggested, is that flowering in the Rheingau, having been later, was hit by a brief but disruptive June cool spell so that the eventual bunches ended up looser and hence more resistant to rot.