2015 Riesling Bruck

“This was a harvest where you really didn’t have to exert yourself,” said a smiling Peter Malberg. “There was absolutely no rot, zero. I’ve never had such healthy grapes. The challenge for me was more to find the right moment to pick. As you know, I want lovely acidity, so I tend to pick early. By late September, I noted that the pH levels in Grüner Veltliner had gone too high. So I separated out the latter portion of the pressing, and the press juice from Hochrain and Weitenberg got blended into my generic [Liebedich] bottling.” Malberg finished harvesting on October 13; to put that in perspective, bear in mind that this estate reaches to the highest, westernmost, coolest portion of the Wachau, astride the tiny Spitzerbach, rather than in vineyards that overlook the Danube. And although in aggregate the 2015s weigh in near the upper end of alcohol among this estate’s eight collections, the 2015 Riesling Bruck, representing Malberg’s next-to-last picking of the vintage, registers the lowest alcohol yet for that bottling (12.1 percent). Having judged that his young 2015s were developing rapidly, Malberg bottled most of them in April 2016. The wines were raised entirely in the facility he designed and had built high above Viessling on the Right Bank of the Spitzerbach, having before that utilized a refitted abattoir on the edge of Spitz. (For details concerning the Malberg estate’s vineyards, practices and recent history, readers are invited to consult the extended introduction to my report on its 2013s. And, as explained more thoroughly there, I have acceded to his request that I refrain from accompanying my reviews of his wines with scores.)