Richter’s 2011 Brauneberger Juffer Riesling Kabinett illustrates what he takes to be almost a given, namely that Brauneberg’s Juffer and Juffer-Sonnenuhr excel in difficult vintages, though my experience from the present collection is of variable performance from these sites. In this instance, there is – for now at least – not much complexity. But there is purity, with ample primary juiciness of apple, lemon and pineapple fruit, subtly marked by hints of nut oils and wet stone, all lingering on a buoyant, silken-textured palate. I would plan to enjoy this by 2016.
On the one hand, relate Dirk and son Constantin Richter, they wanted to get started picking by the first week in October of 2011 because acids were already low; on the other hand, some of the fruit still needed time for its flavors to ripen. In the event, the finished wines here vary considerably in acidity and, unfortunately, in overall quality as well, a variability certainly also impacted by the effects of August 2011’s savage hail – which struck Muhlheim and Veldenz especially hard – and by the Richter team’s unfamiliarity with the vineyards in Wehlener Sonnenuhr that they recently acquired to replace their former holdings, as part of that site’s vineyard reorganization. Some of those musts that were selected for vinifying as dry wines were sufficiently low in acidity to trigger a lower-than-usual upper-bound to permissible residual sugar for legal Trockenheit; but allowing such wines to convert even a couple of additional grams of sugar was aesthetically risky when levels of finished alcohol in some instances already threatened to derail attempts at elegance or refreshment. Even those aforementioned dry wines, incidentally, all fermented spontaneously, as has already long been true of a majority of Richter Rieslings. There is a bumper crop of Auslesen this year not only on account of prevalent botrytis but also, explains Constantin Richter, because while several of these amounted to just a single cask, the style of the vintage’s already-rich Spatlesen was not such as to easily accept blending-in of botrytized, significantly higher must weight material. He adds that he suspects these Auslesen will count as exceptions to the vintage rule – at his address, anyway – in their longevity. Three Richter 2011 Trockenbeerenauslesen were still fermenting as of last autumn, and I expect to taste them later this year. A would-be Eiswein became, in Richters’ words, “Eiswein vinegar” because even if the authorities had approved it as Eiswein (and scarcely any wines were so-certified, a move by the official Weinkontrolle that I discussed critically in my introduction to reviews of Nahe and Rheinhessen 2011s in issue 205), Dirk Richter himself felt that the wine, picked in January, wasn’t sufficiently Eiswein-typical or outstanding.
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