Shine on You Crazy Diamonds: The Top Wines of the Erratic 2017 Vintage on the German Rhine Are Dazzling
Although many of the best wines from the 2017 vintage in the Rhine Valley and the valleys of its major tributaries are still very young, they already make it clear that some kind of miracle occurred there. For many of the leading producers, the growing season brought multiple moments of despair as nature threw one major obstacle after another in their path, yet the best wines have ended up with great expressiveness and a diamond-like brightness.
“Right after the terrible frost damage in late April, none of my colleagues or I imagined that we would harvest such quality in 2017,” says Cornelius Dönnhoff of the Dönnhoff estate in Oberhausen, Nahe, who garnered two 100-point ratings for his rieslings this year. He wasn’t alone either. A string of his colleagues in the Nahe, Rheingau, Rheinhessen and the Pfalz also received a slew of 95-point ratings and above.
Cornelius Dönnhoff of the Dönnhoff estate in Oberhausen, Nahe, grabbed two 100 point ratings with his amazing 2017 dry and sweet rieslings.
By chance I was in the Nahe visiting the top producers when that frost damage occurred and found entire vineyards with barely any undamaged young green vine shoots visible. In 35 years of reporting on the wines of Germany, I have never seen frost damage that bad. The contrast between this scene and the dazzlingly concentrated, super-racy and mineral Dönnhoff Riesling Nahe Dellchen GG 2017, the joint-highest-rated dry riesling in this report with a perfect 100 points, could not be starker!
In view of the threat posed to their livelihoods, many leading winemakers in the winegrowing regions along the Rhine went to enormous effort and expense to light frost-protection candles, but each producer could only protect one or two hectares because of the manpower needed to light all the candles at the right moment. Spring frost damage can impact quantity and quality, but in retrospect, the main problem this time was a savage reduction in yield of up to 50% for the producers worst hit.
For example, there are just shy of 5,000 bottles of that Dellchen GG 2017 from Dönnhoff, well down on the production of a normal year. This widespread situation means you will have to move rapidly to obtain many of the highest-rated 2017 dry and sweet white wines that this report focuses on. We recommend you contact suppliers now to be sure of avoiding disappointment.
The second major problem that many producers faced was hail in late August. The smallness of the crop due to the frost had led the grapes to ripen at breakneck speed, so they were therefore already soft when they were hit by what one producer called “the natural equivalent of machine gun fire from one side of the rows.” Where the hail was that bad, for example in Westhofen in the Rheinhessen, the entire crop could have been destroyed hadn’t the leading producers taken radical steps.
“It was an enormous job, but we rigorously removed all the affected fruit. We were amazed by how good the resulting wines tasted,” says Philipp Wittmann of the Wittmann estate in Westhofen. The 98-point rating for his deep and very complex Morstein GG 2017 proves not only how well he and his team coped with the crisis, but how good the ripeness and balance of the unaffected grapes was. “Although the harvest was very early, the alcoholic content of the wines was never too high and the acidity level was always good,” adds Wittmann.
These steep slopes overlook the town of Lorch in the Rheingau, where Eva Fricke made a string of the best 2017 dry and sweet rieslings for the region
Where there was no hail in late August, there was at least heavy rainfall that led to noble rot. The grey fungus is a friend of sweet wine producers, and unlike in 2016 when fall conditions were too dry for much noble rot to develop, some amazing riesling auslese, beerenauslese (BA) and trockenberenauslese (TBA) were made in 2017. The most spectacular has to be the Robert Weil Riesling Rheingau Kiedrich Gräfenberg Trockenbeerenauslese 2017, which we rated a perfect 100 points.
On the other hand, botrytis is the enemy of dry whites, so producers focused on these wines often had their work cut out selecting clean fruit. Many of the less successful 2017 dry whites disappoint either because they have a touch of rot, or because the grapes were harvested too early out of fear that rot would spread fast and taint them. As a general rule, either a producer was up to the challenge and made good wines across their entire range or all his/her 2017s are weak. There aren’t many of them in our report, because we focused tightly upon the best producers.
What made 2017 unique among modern vintages on the Rhine was the way that the frost-damaged vines underwent a good second bud break about two weeks after the frost. “That meant there were two generations of grapes on the vines,” explains Hansjörg Rebholz of the Ökonomierat Rebholz estate, based in Siebeldingen in the Pfalz. “That’s one reason the 2017s have such fresh acidity, which you rarely have in a warm vintage such as this.” His three 2017 dry riesling GGs, from the Kastanienbusch, Im Sonnenschein and Ganz Horn sites all rated 97 points thanks to their stunning balance of ripeness, minerality and acidity.
During our research along the German Rhine we stumbled upon a number of striking new trends. In the Pfalz, a number of leading producers such as Christmann in Gimmeldingen are moving away from grauburgunder, aka pinot gris or pinot grigo, although it is fashionable in Germany. “We’ve come to the conclusion that alongside our strong specialization in riesling, weissburgunder or pinot blanc has the best future for dry whites here,” affirms Steffen Christmann.
Grapes go through the sorting table at the estate of Wittmann in Westhofen, Rheinhessen. Strict grape selection was often essential across the Rhine in 2017 owing to hail and frost damage as well as rot.
Meanwhile in Rheinhessen, there is a widespread shift away from silvaner. Taste a great dry silvaner such as the rich yet refined Probstey 2017 from Thörle in Saulheim, the highest-rated silvaner in our report at 94 points, and you could wonder why. However, this traditional grape variety has acquired the image of being old-fashioned — a fatal blow on Planet Wine in the 21st century. Now, only a small group of producers continue to specialize in making high-quality wines from it. Even Thörle shine more brightly with spätburgunder, aka pinot noir; its 2016s are the best to date for the variety there.
For a number of producers, I would go as far as saying that 2017 is their best vintage ever. They include famous winemakers such as Klaus Peter Keller of Keller in Flörsheim-Dalsheim, Rheinhessen, whose Pettenthal GG 2017 is the other 100-point dry riesling in this report. But it also holds true for a number of lesser-known producers, among them Fred Prinz of the Prinz estate in Hallgarten/Rheingau, whose Schönhell GG 2017 is the region’s highest-rated dry riesling at 99 points.
Please note that although Keller presented us all his 2017 riesling GGs to taste, the producer did not show us the 2017 G-Max dry riesling. Leitz in Rüdesheim, Rheingau, presented no 2017 riesling GGs because he is switching to giving these more than one year of maturation before bottling. We hope to catch up with these important wines in due course. — Stuart Pigott, Contributing Editor