2017 Riesling Saar

Roman Niewodniczanski commenced picking across his vast estate on September 22, 2017, which in retrospect he deems not a bit too early for capturing lively acidity, but also for selecting a bit of fresh noble botrytis. The Van Volxem 2017 harvest was over less than a month later, marking this estate’s earliest completion under the current ownership and probably ever. The huge, sophisticated new facilities that now loom rather ominously above the Saarfeilser vineyard were sufficiently finished to process the 2017 crop, though given some 40% loss to frost on top of requisite selectivity at harvest, this was far from a vintage that demanded expanded cellar capacity.

Niewodniczanski thinks of “precision” as the watchword for his 2017s, and finds nothing wrong with their displaying some youthful austerity. In recent vintages, he has resolved and worked to keep his dry-tasting vineyard-designated wines legally trocken, and this year all of them complied and are officially Grosse Gewächse. Niewodniczanski believes that his aesthetic goals have been significantly advanced by the introduction since 2015 of a vibrating sorting table on top of his many long-standing selective measures in both vineyards and press house. I sometimes have the impression both in talking with him and in tasting some of the wines that both would benefit from not trying too hard, but instead loosening up a bit, though that would not reflect either his personality or the dry Riesling aesthetic that dominates in influential German wine circles. A promising aspect of recent collections has been some Prädikat wines that display livelier acidity and less-dominant sheer sweetness than was formerly the case at this address, though the relevant genres – whether Kabinett or botrytis-ennobled – still strike me as works in process, with precision being precisely what’s typically missing. (For much further detail on the recent evolution of this now more than 200-acre estate, consult the introductions to my reports on its 2015s and 2014s.)