This morning, after about three to four weeks of feeling like I misjudged the 2022 vintage a bit, an essential truth popped into my head. A truth so obvious and easy to grasp, that I felt more than a bit embarrassed that I didn’t understand this earlier.
an essential truth | eine essentielle Wahrheit
And the truth is this: “The earlier a vintage report is written, the more full of shit it is.”
Dr. Ulrich “Ulli” Stein in the cellar at Haus Waldfrieden, July 2023, only days before the vom Boden 10th anniversary party.
Once stated out loud, made real by sound, it’s undeniable and obvious and… instructive. It’s fun to get the vintage summaries in March and April, but they are at best vague ideas of a future that might be, a strange cocktail of weather reports, initial impressions and story telling.
As I wrote in an introduction to the 2022 Lauer collection, the early trip to Germany in March or April is a necessary evil, in a way.
As an importer, you feel like you have to know how the vintage is sizing up. Yet what you taste (really) in these early months is the vague trace of what the wines might be, or could be. It’s a bit like interviewing a four-year-old for a few minutes and then being asked to assess what their SAT score will be in a decade.
And so it was that in May when I first started writing my 2022 vintage report, and in June when it was finally published, that I made my best personal assessment of the vintage. To be honest, even at that time I knew I was undervaluing the vintage. I think it was what I’ll call “greatness fatigue.” Fatigue after not only the truly epic vintage 2021 with all its superlatives, but fatigue after years and years of constant email offers, Instagram posts, all of them touting “the greatest” this or that, proclaiming another 99- or 100-point wine with big bold type and exclamation points.
I guess I just wanted a reset – some real talk.
I did everything I could not to use the word “great” in describing 2022. I reported what I thought was vital and central to the wines of this vintage, which was joy and lightness and energy. Read the full text here.
Now, in late August of 2023, back from nearly a month in Germany where I thoughtfully tasted – and actually drank the wines – in many cases lazily with good people, at lunch, at dinner – not assessing, but enjoying, thinking reflectively and quietly about all these wines, I have had an important realization. The vintage is more serious than I first reported.
Maybe what is bugging me is the line I wrote in my first report: “Vintage 2021, no matter how you looked at it, was serious. Vintage 2022 is something different.”
These sentences, one after the other, vaguely implies that 2022 is not serious. I now think this is in some cases, critically incorrect. No, these “serious” wines are not as ubiquitous as they were in 2021, but they are there.
I also feel like I’ve come to realize something important about the overall aesthetic of the two vintages. If 2021 has an architecture that is monumental, lumbering rocket ships with immense depth and momentum, 2022 at its best is an arrow, weightless and cutting with a razor-sharp point. It could well be that many of the wines of 2022 will not go the same distance as the 2021ers. My analogy works in this regard too: A rocket ship will travel further than an arrow.
Yet, for most people not planning on comparing the wines after a decade, these differences are more a matter of aesthetics and less of quality.
I still like this snazzy piece of writing from my vintage report, and I think it captures much of the essence of 2022:
“Vintage 2022 feels to me like joy, in liquid form. The best wines of 2022 almost force you to smile, as quickly and as surely as your leg twitched when the doctor gently tapped you on your knee as a child. ‘Lightness’ is, without question, the absolute defining characteristic of the vintage, which is something of a shock given that this was a hot vintage. You’ll hear the word “classic” thrown around as a descriptor of the vintage, which is partly true, though I don’t think this quite captures the totality of these complex wines. The wines of 2022 are direct, yet also diffuse and expansive. Or, in simile form: The wines feel like arrows (that’s the direct part) made of clouds (that’s the diffuse part), whipping around your mouth, showering it with citrus and stone fruit, green herbal details and cooling oceanic breezes. Time after time, two words kept coming to me, describing in two punches these punchy wines: SATURATE and EVAPORATE… because this is exactly what they do. The wines are all here – a million explosions of joy – and then they are not. A peaceful stillness, a salty reverberation; a mouth salivating for more.”
Vintage 2022 is a celebration of the ethereal… in some serious cases made manifest in liquid form.
If not all the wines of 2022 quite have the bones and structure to age for 10 or 20+ years, some do. Here’s a short discussion, an exploration if you will into some specific wines, categories, producers and bottlings.
a matter of balance | Eine Frage des Gleichgewichts
Vintage 2022 was, all in all, easy. Which is not to say it wasn’t stressful or that there weren’t hardships. Only that there wasn’t all that much work one could do. More than one winemaker – especially the organic growers – noted that they basically didn’t have to spray. (Vintage 2022 probably goes down as the most ecological vintage on record in Germany and Europe at large.) There was no rain, no moisture, no pressure – nothing. For weeks on end, the vines weren’t really growing. What was there to do?
As discussed in the initial vintage review, the dance of 2022 was the balance between concentration and acidity. Too much concentration could (and does in certain cases) shape wines that to my palate are a bit too heavy feeling and round. Too little concentration and the the wines feel hollow or dilute.
I think this is the key concern of 2022. Yet, if you threaded this needle perfectly, if the concentration was in balance with the acidity, then the wines can be shockingly, almost improbably, good.
These are the wines that made me stop in my tracks and reconsider the vintage.
I wrote this in my first vintage report: “If there is one key to successfully navigating the vintage (beyond the most important: FOLLOW AND SUPPORT GROWERS AND NOT VINTAGES!), it is considering the age of the vines from which the wine was made. With certain exceptions I’m sure, those with older vines made denser wines. This is also the basic key to discerning which wines will go the distance, meaning 10-20+ years – again, look for the old vines. People lie – old vines don’t.”
Now let us get a touch more specific. I hardly want to present any sort of “buying guide” or give non-sensical accolades – “this is the Spätlese Trocken of the vintage!” – but I do want to point out some specific bottles that wowed me and made me think again.
Please note I realize all of this writing will have zero affect on the market. Don’t mind me. I am scratching an itch that I have to scratch.
the wines | die Weine
Gutswein and Ortswein!
I covered the “Gutswein” (which means the estate wines) in the first run-through. Not much to add, they are delicious.
Emrich-Schönleber has a confusing array of dry wines. The dry Riesling “Mineral” is a favorite and, by and large, gets the attention it deserves – as do the GGs at the higher end. Yet in the middle, “baby GGs” that were once labeled “Spätlese Trockens” are very serious in 2022. Look for the “Fruhtau,” sourced exclusively from the Grand Cru Frühlingsplätzchen and the “Halgans,” source exclusively from the Grand Cru Halenberg. These are superb in 2022.
Julian Haart’s village-level “Piesporter” is always one of my favorite wines. It is a rare bird in 2022, but if you can find it, buy it all.
Keller: Reporting that this estate made great wines is like breaking the news that the sun is the center of the universe. We know already. Yet a few bottlings here deserve some love. The Westhofener Silvaner (only the second vintage) is absolutely nuts – lithe and bouncy and so transparent. The “RR” which is normally sourced from a red-soil parcel of the Kirchspiel was supercharged in 2022 by a top cask from Abtserde and one from Morstein that were destined for the GGs. But they stopped fermenting a bit short of dry and the Kellers thought the wines were too good… so they got blended in to the “RR.” Seek out this wine.
Lauer’s entire collection was perhaps the main instigator for this review. I just found all the wines, from the village up to the Grand Crus to the Prädikats, profound. I’d add that Mosel Fine Wines, whom I respect profoundly and normally closely align on bottlings, not only gave the collection good-but-not-great scores. Additionally, the wines they gave the top scores to were my least favorite, by and large. I don’t think there is any great insight here, other than, “wow, wine is complicated and subjective.” But it’s good to remind ourselves of this, especially when long-winded importers are trying to prove essential truths.
In general Weiser-Künstler presented for me one of the collections of the vintage. Sure, the “follow the old vines” adage works here, but there is something more. There is an extreme lightness here, yet ample concentration and nervy acids. The humble village-level Trarbacher is simply bonkers gut. I wrote this before but it holds: This may be one of the most underrated dry Rieslings in Germany. You rock-dorks especially, try and find this wine, it is sublime. The Gaispfad Kabinett Trocken is always superb – 2022 is no exception.
Kabinett
Here is another fact I can’t quite reconcile or make sense of: The top Kabinetts of 2022 are crazy-good.
I have tasted Lauer’s 2022 auction Kabinett No. 5 now on three separate occasions and on two of these three occasions I wrote the following: “This is perhaps one of the greatest Kabinetts I have ever tasted.”
Julian Haart, Keller, Max Kilburg, Ludes (who in 2022 made four separate Kabinetts), Stein, Vollenweider and Weiser-Künstler – they all shaped some brilliant Kabinetts (seek out Wei-Kü’s Sonnenlay Kabinett which is a show-stopper – perhaps in youth outshining the legendary Ellergrub even – it is bonkers).
One savvy New York sommelier – a great wine-mind and a great friend – was with me in Germany last month and she asked, fairly, the following question: “So if 2021 was supposed to be the greatest Kabinett vintage of the century, a wet and cold vintage, how is it that vintage 2022, a hot and dry vintage, has produced such amazing Kabinetts?”
I suppose my overall response would be the following. Vintage 2021 has likely given us more truly great Kabinetts than nearly any other vintage of the last 50 years when the “Kabinett” was first created by the 1971 German wine law. Vintage 2022 has some very high highs, but I think there are far fewer in general. Perhaps the great Kabinetts of 2022 are something of an exception? I think also in terms of style, they follow my rough aesthetic outline above, less rocket ship (2021) and more arrow (2022). They are just lighter and more cutting. It’s a style difference and not necessarily a quality difference.
And as I mentioned in my first go-round of the vintage: The seriousness, the quality of the 2022 Kabinetts (as with the 2021 Kabinetts before them) also comes as almost a by-product of this very unique moment in German wine culture. All this may seem very grandiose and vague to the average consumer, but it is not at all vague for the grower. The truth is that many growers can now command the same amount of money with their Kabinetts as they can with any other wine; the relationship between the Prädikat and the cost of the wine has been largely shattered. This is the game-changing fact and it means, quite simply, that entire new parcels and vineyards and grapes are open now for this genre.
And you can taste this again in 2022, as in 2021.
For those of you who want to read a rather verbose historical and financial history of the Kabinett over the last quarter century, please see my 2021 vintage report here.
Red wines and the “GGs” and Grand Cru Dry White Wines…
For the most part, these early vintage reports have to basically ignore two important categories: Red wines and the “GGs” or Grand Cru dry wines. Why? Well, because these wines just take time. I tasted more of the dry white wines through the summer again and the difference three months makes is revelatory. No one speaks to this too much, but the truth is the change that wines go through in their first six to twelve months is absolutely bonkers. Like puppies, the first twelve months are wild – they grow and change so much… then it begins to slow down.
Obviously a final verdict will have to wait, but there is very good reason to believe these could be among the strongest parts of the vintage. First, a ripe, warmer vintage will normally play into these categories. If the acidities are vibrant enough to support Kabinetts, then they are certainly formidable enough for superb dry white wines. The question I suppose for these wines and this vintage is one of ripeness and of concentration. For the top wines, there is good reason to believe these may be very, very good – something in line with the 2020 dry wines, yet with a bit more focus and cut.
Keller has already said he believes his 2022 Schubertslay GG is one of the top five dry Rieslings he and Julia have made at the estate (this wine will go to auction in September of 2023). Yet take this perhaps as the canary in the coalmine (in reverse?) – old vines and dry Rieslings in 2022 have the potential for magic.
As I wrote before: We’ll have to wait and see.
Maybe it’s time to explore vintage 2022 a bit more? Let me know what you think.