We actually wrote this piece a couple of months ago to with the idea of promoting a couple of specific, higher end estates that happened to arrive ahead of the pack. As it turned out, we never fired it out because savvy buyers hit them pretty hard before we ever had the chance. Some of our suppliers treat vintage like a nuisance in their quest to get wines ‘branded’ so that people buy them every year. But let’s face it, vintage matters. Some folks can get more out of a difficult harvest than others, and, funny thing, there is always seems to be more widespread success when Nature is kind. But ultimately vintners are limited by the cards they are dealt no matter how good a player they are.
“our assessment has been and continues to be O! M! G!”
What’s our point? Well, after an extensive tasting of the Germans in 2015, our assessment has been and continues to be O! M! G! We left two massive tastings this spring shaking our heads. Are the 2015 Germans really that good? In both cases, we had the opportunity to retaste a few selections from each event in our own, somewhat more clinical environment and let’s just say that we are pretty sure these are the real deal like there hasn’t been in quite some time.
We have a perspective there having been deeply involved in the subject (Germans) since the early 1980s, and have tasted extensively virtually every year since the mid-90s. We think we have a pretty good handle on the subject, we dare say perhaps better than most critics. The Germans have had an excellent run over the last couple of decades from a historical perspective. However, based on the 200+ wines we have tasted thus from the 2015 vintage, we can honestly say it is one of the best vintages we have ever had.
If you are a true fan of great Riesling, it is go time. The 2015s have powerful but ripe acidity, plenty of packed-in fruit, and already show some complex and defined aromatics even though they were still wound up from bottling and transport back when we had the majority of them. Even beyond the impressive up front ‘attack’ that you intuitively knew was only going to get better with a little time, and the subtle but sizzling underpinning of acidity, there was a ’second gear’ to almost all of them. You’d taste, you’d spit (mostly), and the wine would still linger a bit, after which it had an unusual ‘second hit’ on the palate, almost elevating again and saying ‘I am not done with you yet’ (say it with a German accent and you’ll really get the feel). The wines are precise, loaded and true to their pradikat levels.
We know there are pundits who may not be on the same page (even though they should be), though we have not seen a lot of widespread commentary thus far (which is surprising). For the most part the pundits seem to favor wines that are sweeter and softer, just the opposite of what we think makes for exceptional Riesling. We would hold forth high scoring examples from vintages like 2011 and 2014 as proof of our premise. We found consistent concentration issues that we were not particularly enamored with. In fact even when some of these wines were offered to us at discounted prices, with scores in hand, we passed!
If you go back to the turn of the century and read the reviews since, the written word would suggest that 2001 would still be the reigning ‘vintage of the century’. In our minds, 2015 looks to be at least the equal of 2001 and we’d actually give it a slight edge. That’s saying something from a long term perspective, but we are pretty thrilled with the 2015s overall and it is a vintage where the ‘big dogs’ truly shined. The only downside to the vintage is, as it is so often with exceptional vintages, quantities are rather small.
Needless to say it is high time we started seriously promoting this great vintage, and do we have a lineup for you! We’re going to make references to a few specific bottlings, but consider this an endorsement of 2015 as a whole. The beauty here is it is an amazing vintage, and we’ve already done a bit of filtering. So if you love Germans like we do, have at it knowing full well it’s impossible to make a mistake.
As far as what to buy, it’s all about personal choice. But we’ve highlighted ten that represent a lovely cross-section of styles and appellations. We’ll start with Stefan Gerhard Hattenheimer Hassel Kabinett Feinherb 2015. As most of you know feinherb is another way to say halb trocken or ‘off dry’. Gerhard was a favorite of ours a few years back before his importer liquidated and the wines were off the market for a while. The 2015 has the riveting fruit, sizzling acidity and drier profile that defines the style of this up-and-coming Rheingau estate.
On the kabinett front, this is a sensational vintage with the traditionally styled wines showing plenty of fruit and nicely tucked away, lifted acidity. Start with the Shafer-Frohlich Bockenauer Felseneck Kabinett 2015. At the first major German tasting we attended last June, in a lineup filled with top drawer traditional estates Tim Frohlich’s wines were one of the two clear winners in the room (along with Schloss Lieser). This young, talented Nahe winemaker is emerging as one of the top guns in all of Germany and his 2015s are epic from top to bottom. Intense fruit, plenty of verve, and beautifully infused minerality, this Wine Advocate 93 is a winner.
In a slightly fruitier vein, we have the pick-a-pair from the reliable Monchhof and Christoffel, both made by the talented Robert Eymael of Monchoff. These definitely play at a little sweeter end of the kabinett range with the biggest different being the sites themselves, with the J. J. Christoffel Riesling Kabinett Erdener Treppchen 2015 playing the tighter, mineral-laced, highly spiced precision hand while the Monchhof Riesling Kabinett Urzig Wurzgarten 2015, while still playing the spice and slate card, leans more in the direction of red currant and violet in its profile. These are some of the classiest kabinetts you will find for this kid of fare.
It should come as no surprise that Willi Schaefer hit it out of the park in 2015. His layered, honeyed, insistent, stony Willi Schaefer Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spatlese #10 2015 is, as importer terry Thiese puts it, profoundly expresses the vintage and, like epic vintages 2001 and 2010, more electrifying, and in many ways more astounding. Selbach Oster seems to have upped their game over the last three or four vintages and the 2015s are a high point. This single bloc masterpiece from a super-steep slatey site, the Selbach-Oster Riesling Zeltinger Schlossberg ‘Schmitt’ 2015, has impressive density and range, and it’s just getting going.
Finally, after a couple of surprisingly ‘un-amazing’ vintages, the 2015 Donnhoffs are some of the best we have ever had from this Nahe legend. The Donnhoff Oberhauser Brucke Riesling Spatlese 2015 (WA 92) and Donnhoff Riesling Spatlese Schlossbockelheimer Felsenberg Nahe 2015 (WA 91) play way above these modest scores..
Hey, it is still early in the game because there hasn’t been a lot of ‘chatter’ in the press about the 2015s in Germany (or about German wine in general for that matter). But this is an epic year that we speak of in terms of the all time greats we’ve experienced like 2001, 1990, and 1983. See our complete 2015 German Wine List here.
