I managed to sneak out for an hour to the Howard Ripley tasting on Wednesday. I had thought about skipping this for the first time in several years as most of my Riesling budget goes on the dry GGs these days and I pretty much buy the same wines from the same producers each year anyway. Boy, I’m glad I did go!
Sugar is your friend in 2013. The trocken wines were, with very, very few exceptions, hard, even astringent. I’m all for cool, mineral wines like fresh streams over slate. However, most of these were like trying to bite the slate itself. Even the kabinetts for the most part struggled. The fun starts at the spatlese and by the time you get to BA and above you’re in pretty special territory.
I tasted through the full ranges shown of Zilliken (just one 13), von Hovel, Peter Lauer, Selbach-Oster, Scloss Lieser, Schafer-Frohlich, Donnhoff and Keller.
can you elaborate a bit more? “Sugar is your friend in 2013” to me means there were lots of sugar in the wines in 2013…
but then you mention the Kabinetts struggled… how do you mean struggle? not enough sugar? too much?
What I meant was as you move up from trocken and kabinett to spatlese and particularly Auslese and above, the wines soften and add weight dramatically from what are very hard, astringent dry wines this year. I’ll try to get some TNs up at some point.
2013 was a difficult vintage.
First, it has long been very cold, the flowering was very late, and then the weather was much too cold with a very short summer. The wines have a very high acid and in many cases been de-acidified.
This also explains why wines with higher sugar are maybe more pleasant to drink in 2013, here the harsh acid is somewhat buffered.
But it’s probably still too early for a final judgement on the vintage, the best wines are not yet on the market and in 2010 the vintage was also almost written off, only to discover then that there were great wines … but 2013 was difficult in any case.
Only tasted a few so far. The Donnhoff Estate Riesling and Leitz Dragonstone were both very, very fine.
That being said - grab a roll of antacids. You will need them.
It’s been a roller coaster of vintages with many being soft and sweet (e.g. 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011), and a few really acidic (2010, 2013 so far). Balance such as in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2012 is what I crave. Brightness for the sake of brightness turns me off as much as overfat wines.
For my taste, i like 2010 a lot and i think there will be fantastic wines in the long run, but if you found the '10s too tart, stay away from 2013, they will be probably more harsh when not de-acidified.
But please note that a final judgment will be possible only if the best wines come on the market and these are usually harvested several weeks later, which can make a significant difference in 2013…
Just to be clear, I’m absolutely NOT advocating staying clear of 2013. The Auslese and above were simply amazing. I had given up buying at that level in recent years but these wines will tempt me back in. Indeed, at those levels these were the best I have ever tasted at this stage. One, in particular, will be what I will ask to taste on my deathbed.
It’s going to be very interesting tasting the GGs in September to see whether they have tamed this hardness so prevalent in the trockens and many kabs this week.
Thanks for this info, David. This explains why the 11 Hoffman-Simon Piesporter Spatlese I had was so different from the 08 vintage which was one of the greatest Spatleses I have ever drunk.
Going over my list, I have several 09 Spatleses and Ausleses and I’m okay with high acidity so the 10s are good with me as well and I have plenty of those. However, I lack all the other vintages you mention, sadly. I did have a few 07s and 05s and even before knowing what you posted here, I refuse to buy any more of them. The 12s have not arrived in Ontario, Canada yet so I will keep an eye out for them.
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