Hopefully MiranK is exploring other German weinguts in search of a worthy alternative to Keller Sche…
…to Keller’s “The-Wine-Not-To-Be-Mentioned” ,
and allowing himself to be distracted by all the other fabulous wines out there!?
As I mentioned earlier (see comment #20 in another thread on this topic), there was peronospora in the Saar region. It affected grapes in many top sites, and certain producers had serious problems.
At Hofgut Falkenstein, pero was not an issue, and we sprayed only organic treatments. We had low yields from short pruning in the winter (one cane per vine), not from removing bad bunches or green harvesting. (Note: most growers have two canes per vine.)
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Guillermo -
Germany is a big country and you can’t make sweeping generalizations about a vintage. As you point out the Saar was not as hard hit with Peronospora as other areas. Even vineyards very close to each other had varying degrees of Peronospora. And there can be more than one reason a vintage turns out a certain way and it is most likely different across regions and within regions due to microclimates.
Here is what I know for sure German winemakers are the hardest working winemakers in the world and live in their vineyards. As I said in my Ludes IG post Julian Ludes told me he was spending 16 hours a day, seven days a week in the vineyard last year dealing with the problems. Secondly 2021 is a great vintage no matter how we got there!
Actually he is! I know he was deep in Franken looking for Scheu.
BTW the best alternative I have found to Keller Scheurebe is Paul Weltner.
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Thank you Robert! I’ve been eyeing Paul Weltner’s Scheubies, your recommendation nudges me over the line to pick up a few to try; I’ll look into it!
I’m not making sweeping generalizations about anything, let alone the whole of Germany. I was quoting, at this point five, growers in two subregions Middle Mosel and Saar to answer William’s question as to whether growers were spinning mildew/rot/Peronospora as a good thing by saying the pruning of bad bunches led to concentration. I laid out where the Peronospora was and quoted three growers in the area who did not attribute concentration to Peronospora-driven prunings, but talked about long hang times in the fall.
You replied to that saying that “growers were in the vineyards constantly removing rot, when the vintage turned there were a lot less grapes hanging which caused them to be more concentrated.” You generalized. And you explicitly and directly attributed concentration to “removing rot.”
So, in response to your comeback, I quoted two growers who said the concentration was due to the summer rains in the growing season. One of those producers I quoted, Falkenstein, has a staff member participating in this thread. And he just confirmed that their low yields were from winter pruning. He did not address the concentration, but, of course, Johannes and Erich Weber did and they said it was caused by the rains.
The point is I cannot find a single grower making the claim that you are making that, and I quote from you again: “ growers were in the vineyards constantly removing rot, when the vintage turned there were a lot less grapes hanging which caused them to be more concentrated.”
But you, and maybe Paula, are the only ones saying that; not the growers or winemakers. Let’s please not create a myth here about mold-driven prunings being the source of concentration in the 2021 German vintage. We know the source of the concentration: lots of dry extract encouraged by ample rains in the growing season and well before harvest.
Guillermo - First off I was simply trying to extrapolate what Paula may have meant based on what I heard from being there on the ground in August 2021 and having just returned from visiting 20 growers. I obviously don’t think her comment was to imply that the rot/mildew was good. That is it.
You do have impressive HTML skills.
Germany vintage speculations in 2021 are on some next level stuff 
. There are plenty of great wines, mediocre wines and straight up unpleasant wines. I have tasted all kind of stuff at this point and even with all this hype around the vintage I still think you can’t really generalize 2021 as something because it’s not. For some producer it could be a vintage of the 2000s while some it’s just one vintage with a lot of stress & work. Mosel had serious problems with heavy rain, low temps & all kinds of diseases but even in Middle Mosel some prime vineyards had way more problems than others. Also Rheinhessen & Pfalz did not suffer that much or at all in some areas and crops were more or less same as in previous years. You can check the reviews & follow recommendations from here & in other sources but my advice is very simple: Taste & buy what you like. If one entry level bottle is good chances are very high that the whole range is solid as is the case in every vintage.
We here seem to run into the problem of tryng to tie a sensual perception (“concentration”) to some analytics (“dry extract”). And I’d like to argue that too many people use terms too loosely and without connection to (chemical) reality for this approach to work.
The availability of water makes for high potassium intake by the vine. Potassium is responsible for the perception of “body” in a wine. “Dry extract” strongly correlates with the acid content of must / wine, hence no one can be surprised that a high-acid year such as 2021 displays a lot of dry extract - someone upthread tried to explain this already, but the myth persists that “dry extract” is something good per se. It’s not.
What did save 2021 in Germany was the long hang time that was possible due to favorable conditions up to late fall (November). This extended physiological maturation increased the concentration (ha!) of aromatic precursor compounds in the grapes, making for very aromatic wines (potentially - you did need to harvest late!). So the best wines show quite a lot of body, very high yet “ripe” acidity, and virtually perfectly ripened phenolics, which explains the “ripe” perception of the acidity. The full body, in combination with high acidity and intense aromatics makes for the impression of “highly concentrated wines”. In 2021, some Rieslings “go to 11”.
Grape maturity could be achieved at low or high yields, depending on the condition of the canopy (health, size) w.r.t. to the fruit in need of being matured. William’s question is driven by the fact that peronospora (which is always bad) damages the canopy, thereby reducing the vine’s ability to mature even a largely reduced yield. Does it though? That depends on the “surviving” leaf-fruit ratio plus (local) weather patterns in late fall (which were highly favorable). Then, what exactly are “low yields”? Bottling a wine with 25 hl/ha after having harvested 40 hl/ha and discarded 15 hl/ha on the sorting table (or at harvest time by dropping the fruit to the ground), tells us exactly nothing about the actual conditions in the vineyard. And most vinyeard in the M-S-R region are pruned to yield much more than 40 hl/ha, more like 60 or 70 hl/ha. Mosel Riesling with residual sugar is quite robust against yields that are high (on paper), and consumers are very forgiving when it comes to perceiving too thin dry wines as “fine”, really.
Tying the impression the final wine makes in the glas (e.g., concentration) to yields, is too simple at best, and not even wrong in most cases. Evidently, at least from tastings of the finished (if very young) wines, it would appear that the vines were able to mature the grapes into something that made for a compelling wine even if a vinyard was plagued by peronospora. And there’s amplce evidence where vines have not managed that, or grapes were harvested a tad too early, or where the right balance for the finished wine wasn’t just in it because vintage.
Again, 2021 is not at all an excellent year. It’s a disastrous year where the best producers managed agains the odds (if just) to produce very good to excellent wines, the latter especially in cases where the full potential of hang time could be realized (ceterum censeo: not the Kabinetts). Whether these 2021s will turn out to be the best wines ever made, time will tell. I somehow doubt the delta to vintages like, say, 2015, 2016, 2017 or 2019 is large enough to warrant the excitement.
Cheers,
HPE
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I would generally agree with you. However I would add I did not taste a single unpleasant wine amongst the close to 20 growers I visited but I am sure they are out there. Even entry-level wines were excellent from the producers I tasted. Top producers made great wines. The other big part of the story I have not seen much reported on is yields are way down, these wines are going to disappear fast, especially after people start tasting them, see Rodrigo’s note on the Keller Limestone!
For reference here are the producers I visited. I also tasted many other 2021s along the way while in Germany.
Wolfram Stempel* (Mosel)
Martin Müllen (Mosel)
J.B. Becker (Rheingau)
Saalwaecher* (Rheinhessen)
Keller (Rheinhessen)
Schäfer-Fröhlich (Nahe)
Emrich-Schönleber* (Nahe)
Ulli Stein (Mosel)
Phil Lardot (Mosel)
Herman Ludes* (Mosel)
Vollenweider (Mosel)
Weiser-Künstler (Mosel)
Julian Haart (Mosel)
Falkenstein (Saar)
Lauer (Saar)
Egon Müller* (Saar)
Lukas Hammelman* (Pfalz)
*the stars are those where we have sold or will sell through source | material. As I have mentioned in the past yes this is a for profit venture but it is still just a passion project for me.
I don’t think 2021 will turn out to be one of the best vintages ever. I do think the wines are excellent now and will give early drinking pleasure for some time. Which to me is very valuable. To me there is no difference in a vintage that drinks great for the first 10 years or a vintage like 2001 which I still don’t think is ready, both are valuable.
Egon Müller has compared 2021 to 1971. I have never heard him use that comparison even for 2015 which he compared to 1990. I think he knows what he is talking about.
On a serious note I love all of the passion for German wine in this and the other threads. Thanks to all for participating and keep it coming!
Lets do a viritual tasting of some of these wines when they land and can have an interesting debtate.
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Well this is like you list 20 three Michelin stars restaurants and ask is it possible the food can be bad 
? What I have noticed in several wines now is that the middle palate has been almost completely gone and wine has been like it’s been blended with water. And these are from (not as high profile as your list) producers I have really enjoyed in recent years so I have decided not to buy large quantities of single wine without tasting first. As you said there are some stunning entry level wines in 2021 so even the entry level is a very good indicator for the whole lineup.
Robert, I’d be very interested in your view on the 2021s of these two producers, care to waste a few words? Thanks a lot!
Cheers,
HPE
The writes up are both in this thread.
In short Martin Müllen’s collection is stunning. Primarily Kabinett and one excellent Spatlese. They focused mostly on Kabinett because that is what the vintage gave them. I recall their entry-level wine as being one of that category really standing out. They said they do everything the same for this wine as their other wines and want it to be as good as it possibly can be and reflective of the vintage.
As J.B. Becker the majority of the wines are not yet bottled so we only tasted from fuder and the wines have great promise. They lost a significant amount of their crop and this is the first time in over 50 years that they did not make a red wine.
Thanks, I missed that post as I was stuck in London Heathrow at that time.
Cheers,
HPE
My pleasure. I hope to get to finishing up the rest of the producer write ups.
I believe you’re right Hans-Peter. The long hang time was also essential to the concentration and body of the wines. I had mentioned the hang time on the first paragraph of the post you quoted but forgot to add it to the closing sentence. My bad.
It is a point that, as quotes on one my earlier posts show, was made by Alex Loersch when he said “that ripeness and Oechsle were coming with more hanging time,” and also when Constantin Richter said that “the grapes were clean physiologically fully ripe, due to the long vegetation cycle.”
Since dry extract is everything in the wine that isn’t water or ethanol, it can be different types of acid, sugar, potassium salts or other things. Thus, dry extract not only correlates with acidic content, as you say, but also with sugar due to ripeness (and correspondingly relatively lower acids or different types of acid), and it can correlate with other wine characteristics as well. And so, what matters is the sort of dry extract, or portion thereof, being discussed. Of course, a quote is a quote and I have to stick to the words they used, not the ones we wish they had used.
I think context matters though. And, since acidity and sugar, even though they are formally parts of dry extract, commonly get discussed separately and fairly specifically in German Riesling, it’s fair to say that most of the time, when referring to dry extract, most people don’t mean sugar, malic acid (what we’ve taken to calling green acid or unripe acid), or tartaric acid (what we’ve taken to calling ripe acid). Other phenols or acidic compounds yes, along with potassium, etc.
So, in this case, I think it’s fairly clear that, because the point is underscored by all the winemakers that they’re referring to the dry extract produced as a result of the rains in summer, they mean mainly potassium when they say dry extract, and certainly not malic or tartaric acid.
That said, your point is well taken that more precise language would benefit us all.
Due to the Kabinett point you make, which certainly has legs to stand on even if in the fullness of time it might perhaps prove not to be the case (as you had granted in the other thread when you said you still wouldn’t buy those), I had also underlined in my response to William another part of the Alex Loersch quote.
Alex said that they “even brought in Kabinett fruit towards the end of the harvest from the Apotheke.” His harvest was completed on November 5, implying at least some (not sure if all) Kabi fruit harvested in November with, what seems to me, truly astonishing hang time for Kabinett. I haven’t tasted them, but I feel there might be something there. For what it’s worth, MFW reports that his Apotheke Kabinett comes from the upper part of the main hill (which I suppose is cooler as it is farthest from the river) and was haversted at 83° Oechsle and fermented to 51 g/l and 8% ABV. Jean and David remark on its great intensity and presence, something they do not say about his Piesporter Goldtröpfchen or Dhroner Hofberg Kabis. I think I made a mistake not pre-ordering his Apotheke Kabi and sticking to the Apotheke Fels-Terrassen feinherb only.
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Guillermo,
thanks a lot for your detailed and well-thought answer, you master HTML very well, indeed. ![[grin.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/5/53ba06e9b6e4b370ae7e3d7b3702ad1bda0a2d8e.gif "grin"){kind=small}
Quick comment on the dry extract: First, I’m used to comparing sugar-free dry extract, which is more common here in Germany, and I miswrote indeed when I unduly generalized the correlation between “dry extract” and “acid content”. It should have read “sugar-free dry extract”.
Second, in 2021, the situation is slightly funnier. As you can see e.g. from the sugar- and acidity-vs-time plots provided by Mosel Fine Wines, the maturity curve of the grapes in the Mosel region “flattened out” at very low sugar levels and very high acidity levels. Hence, if the dry extract is significantly higher in 2021 than it was in, say, 2020, it can’t be driven by sugar, it must be cause by the high acidity levels. (This is probably especially true given the almost complete absence of botrytis, which would change the content of the non-sugar components in the grape must to higher values.) Hence, the dominating aspect responsible for high dry-extract values in 2021 musts is the high content of tartaric acid (malic acids were indeed quite low). This was my thinking, but of course I might be wrong.
As to the perception of “green acidity”, the “roughness” of the acid doesn’t stem from the acid itself, but from the phenolic compounds. In unripe grapes, with high malic acid (MA) levels, the content of phenolic compounds is low, but the phenolic compounds are very harsh. As grape maturity increases, MA goes down, but the content of phenolic compounds goes up significantly - yet they are perceived as smoother, riper, and fuller. (This is the reason why traditionally whole-bunch pressing using vertical basket presses used to be a thing - it reduces the content of phenolic compounds in the must.)
Back to the very low sugar levels at grape maturity: If you wait to harvest your Kabinett grapes early November, at around or slightly below 80 degrees Oechsle, you will get ripe acidity - just a lot of it. Waiting another 10 days doesn’t do a lot for the sugar (minus concentration effects via “raisination”/shrivelling or botrytis, both being absent in 2021), but it reduced the acidity, enhances the phenolic ripeness, increases the potassium intake (which reduced the acidity in the finished wine since potassium is key to the salt of the TA, which thus falls out), and provided overall “better” aromatics. All these factors depends in a very complex fashion on the vineyard and its growing conditions etc., so I don’t doubt for a second that some producers, e.g. Loersch whom you’ve quoted, have made absolutely stunning Kabinetts. But I’m totally sure those producers have make mindblowingly better Spätleses. To my taste, that is, so YMMV.
That said, Robert wrote something interesting:
I would agree with that assessment. Which is why I wrote that those Kabinetts, spectacular as they may be, should be drunk young. If you don’t care about the long term because, hey, Kabinetts live fast and die young and all that, then I can understand the 2021-Kabinett frenzy a bit better.
Cheers,
HPE
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As I mentioned before, some cooler vineyard sites on the Saar were also affected by pero. So much depended on the spraying regimen of the grower.
I see one important factor omitted in the discussion: the yields per vine. At Hofgut Falkenstein, we pruned for small yields, clipped no unripe grape bunches (so-called green harvesting), and attained optimally ripe grapes by mid-October. None of our musts were at or below 80 degrees Oechsle.
It’s also worth noting that we harvested certain Spätlesen before Kabinett, depending on the site. For example, we picked Meyer Nepal, an old-vine parcel in Niedermenniger Herrenberg, on October 22 and Kugel Peter and Gisela, two adjoining prime parcels of old vines in the best part of Euchariusberg, on October 25. Every producer is different, so it’s difficult to generalize, even if certain critics have a theory about the vintage.
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Just re-read this, thanks Miran! Any chance we’ll be getting more of these write-ups on the 2021s?