One thing that humans the world over have learned in the last 18 months is that instead of getting excited about upcoming events, we should always be preparing our hearts for potential shattering. And yet, is that a reason to stop making plans? Perhaps it is. But encouraged by my wife who had noticed certain, um, irregularities in my personality, I booked flights to Germany with the intention of simply spending time alone in the most inspiring nature that I know of. That being said, I have friends in German wine country who I felt obligated to notify about my plans. Bit by bit, the schedule of my short trip became absolutely packed with visits to winegrowers, interspersed with Covid-19 tests. In other words, it became a trip consisting of immeasurably stimulating and fulfilling work—and Covid-19 tests. But I never allowed myself to believe that it was actually going to happen until I saw Frankfurt airport in the rearview mirror of my rental car.
An important consideration is that I typically visit Germany in April, so the wines had the advantage of five extra months of development compared to the young vintages that I usually taste. Several growers presented their lineups alongside their 2019s, some cuvées of which I had never tasted before as I didn’t travel to Europe in 2020. And when I visit in the spring, very little has happened yet in the current growing season, so the discussion primarily revolves around the vintage of the wines on the table. But this time it was impossible to avoid addressing the significant challenges of the 2021 season while tasting and learning about the 2020s, and often revisiting bottles from 2019. It was a lot of information, and a lot of fun.
Saliently, 2020 was the third heatwave growing season in a row. A few particular stretches of the summer were so inordinately hot that most growers who hadn't embraced some primitive form of irrigation in the previous two years felt obliged to do so *. But every vintage has its fingerprint, and though 2020 shows fruit and the occasional wine flirts with lushness, its range of flavours and textures are distinct from the two previous years. Notably in the Mosel but also true elsewhere, following the hot summer, the torrid days duly receded and autumn was cool with welcome rainy patches. Perhaps because of the minutiae of weather details beyond my grasp, or because of the growers’ newly developed skills of adapting to the now-routine warmth, the wines step lighter than their 2019 and especially 2018 counterparts, and the alcohol levels which are never high in Metrovino's German portfolio are often a touch lower too.
Oliver Müller of Wagner-Stempel
The 2020 vintage isn’t one of livewire or savage acidity. Exceptions, analytically as opposed to statistically, might be Wagner-Stempel’s lineup, Falkenstein’s dry wines, or the odd cuvée here and there at other addresses. Even the range of GGs at Adam, which are arrestingly brilliant, aren't “acid-driven” wines, and when I use the terms “soft” or “gentle” in my tasting notes, it will be in reference to an amiability of acidity that we don't necessarily see every year. But this isn't a bad thing, and we're still talking about German Riesling! I'm just saying that if you hate your teeth, 2020 isn't the vintage that's ultimately going to help you destroy them. When drinking the wines recreationally, many of them strike me as showing a low PH as opposed to abundant acidity, but actual data could debunk this theory.
Andreas Adam
The 2020s are seldom heavy, and many of them could be described as delicate. The balance in general is impeccable, and it's a vintage of both purity and clarity of flavour. The wines with residual sugar rarely taste sweet, and the dry ones almost never taste severe. Despite tasting recently-bottled wines, the aromas and flavours tend to be open-knit and generous, and the structures and concentrations didn't strike me as being such that there will be untenable "shutdown” phases along the road to maturity. 2020 doesn't remind me of any young vintage in particular from the last decade, which is really exciting. Perhaps there are parallels with 2008, but I don't know what the 2008s tasted like when they were this young.
The flavours run along the lines of vivid white and yellow fruit—peaches, Jonagold apples, Mirabelle plums, only occasionally mango and pineapple—allied with the expected and encouraged range of blossoms and judicious but stunning sense of the elusive “minerality”, or whatever the preferred nomenclature for that phenomena is at the moment. (When the early-arriving '20s reached the shop, many of them, both fruity and dry, exhibited a curious but appealing angel food cake aroma. However, I only encountered this a few times while tasting in Germany, and it seems to be a marker of overt youth that's already receding into the wines). There isn't less minerality than usual, it's just that prior to this trio of heatwave vintages, we had regularly seen a dominance of these “stony” or “salty” flavours, whereas here, it's a component of the wine but not the only point of discussion. In 2020, the family of flavours and sensations that might be considered “mineral” very explicitly includes a unique and stark sense of austerity that functions more as a brief lack of flavour more than anything else. By no means is this to say that these wines are missing something—quite the opposite, in fact. The effect could be very favourably compared to when a musician lets a song breathe by dropping out for a few bars, only to reinforce the beauty of the whole when coming back into the mix.
Johannes Weber and Lars Carlberg of Hofgut Falkenstein
Middle Mosel growers Andreas Adam and Alexandra Künstler both shared that the cooler weather in September slowed ripening to the extent that they were able to harvest grapes for balanced, clean and, most importantly, genuine kabinett wines for the first time in several years. This is in opposition to labelling one’s lightest spätlesen as kabinett—an ubiquitous and inevitable practice in the last few decades. Helmut Dönnhoff in the Nahe describes his Leistenberg Kabinett in particular as being the greatest incarnation of this iconic wine in several decades, and all three of these estates made absolutely exhilarating versions of this category. Of course it goes without saying that the Weber family at Hofgut Falkenstein in the Saar and Kai Schätzel in the Rheinhessen, both masters of featherweight intensity, made triumphant kabinetts in the classical style, as did the Spreitzers in the Rheingau which is less expected. If there's anywhere that your money should unreservedly be going this year, it's towards these most inimitably "German” expressions of Riesling that are very much an endangered species.
Equally worthy of rejoice is that a raft of hugely successful diaphanous wines with a paucity of sweetness were also made, notably by Adam, Weiser-Künstler, Dönnhoff, Schätzel, Leitz, Fricke and, especially, Falkenstein. In short, if the confluence of lightness and intensity is a virtue that you find endearing in German wine, 2020 will make you very happy.
Andi Spreitzer
There certainly isn't a shortage of spätlese options, though the quantities produced were often limited even if the range of labels was not. This is partly because when ripe fruit is pristinely clean as it was in 2020, most producers can make more money more easily by crafting dry wines instead. Adam and Dönnhoff were very successful with spätlese, as they always are, but particular mention must be made of Weiser-Künstler's showstopping interpretation from Ellergrub, as well as Spreitzer's superlative “303”, now labelled with the Eiserberg sub-parcel within Lenchen that the fruit has always been sourced from. On the other hand, very little wine of auslese ripeness or above was made, but what I tasted was superb. Spreitzer and Dönnhoff are the heroes in this camp, and the latter also made their first Brucke Eiswein in five years… we've got some, and it's bonkers good.
The dry wines are very successful, and many will be amenable at a younger age than usual. Most of them aren't particularly massive or taut wines, although exceptions definitely exist. If wine from absolutely everywhere else doesn't satiate your craving for weight and power and you need German Riesling to fulfill this role as well, Dönnhoff's GGs will do nicely, as will Wagner-Stempel's Höllberg. This isn't to say that there's a corresponding lack of intrigue or complexity, as that's simply not the case. Elsewhere at the GG (and equivalent) level, growers have rendered admirably compelling wines with lighter frames and slightly less tension than in the last several years. From the Rheinhessen, Schätzel's Ölberg is a levitating marvel, and Wagner-Stempel's Heerkretz is haunting to the point of spirituality. Adam's Mosel GGs are shimmering and gossamer miracles and Fricke's Seligmacher and Krone are stupefying. If we look back on the last decade of dry and “important” German Riesling, the '20s probably aren't at the top level regarding profundity and durability, but they are saturated with beauty and are exceedingly enjoyable to drink **. More on this qualitative assessment later.
Kai Schätzel
A loose category that I need to draw your attention to is the range of dry wines without the stylistic aspirations of the GGs. For VDP members, these would include the Erste Lagen (premier crus) and Ortsweine (village wines), many of which are masterful in 2020, and given their virtues of levity, electricity and drinkability, are certainly more unique to Germany than the GG style. In the Rheingau, Fricke's village wines from Lorch and Kiedrich are breathtaking and immeasurably complex, and Spreitzer's Klostergarten, Muschelkalk and Jesuitengarten (the latter being not quite dry, I know) are triumphs of this hallowed region in the most delightfully traditional sense. Elsewhere, and as I've advised in the past, to miss Wagner-Stempel's revelatory Riesling Porphyr would be a travesty, and 6 bottles for the cellar should be a bare minimum for this Riesling version of Lafarge's Bourgogne Rouge. Schätzel's Niersteiner Trocken is a glorious whirlpool of creamy sunshine, and Dönnhoff's Höllenpfad is a serene, slimline version of their GGs, harnessing the equivalent amount of complexity but concentrating it along a more svelte frame. And then there's Falkenstein's incredible range of delightfully antediluvian dry wines—all idiosyncratic, featherweight and thrilling. This category of dry wines offers insane value, but also great terroir transparency, digestibility, authenticity and cellaring capacity. I really wish that more Riesling lovers took these wines seriously instead of erroneously thinking that their funds and cellar space should be exclusively directed towards the far less useful GGs.
This brings us to the estate wines. Be they dry, fruity or in between, they are as charming and rewarding as you might expect from the talented producers whose congenial 2020s we're lucky enough to work with. Many of the 2019s were nothing short of extraordinary in this modest category, boasting flavours and textures of such intricacy and nuance that one repeatedly looked at the label to make sure that a more prestigious wine hadn't been opened by mistake. In general, the 2020s have less torque and depth, and they're less freakishly cerebral. But please consider this very carefully—are you really concerned that your $28 Riesling isn't intellectually taxing to your palate, or inexplicably riddled with mystery and sentiment? If I suspected that more of you were cellaring these introductory wines, scrutinizing them in technical tastings or plumbing their emotive capacities in environs both secluded and introspective, then I might bemoan the slight qualitative compromise that is often the case between the 2019 and 2020. As it is, the 2020s are amenable, delicious and distinct, and the most rewarding wines on the planet in this price range. They'll make better glass pours than their predecessors, and they'll contribute more convivially to your food and conversation.
You'll notice that at no point during this increasingly burdensome discourse did I proclaim that 2020 is the greatest vintage of the century. Certainly the best wines that I tasted are among the best that I've ever tasted, but this can be said about any vintage. The 2020s are beautifully balanced, articulately terroir-transparent, refreshingly pure and an absolute delight to drink. There's really nothing missing unless you're the kind of person who craves extremes. As I tasted through them, I had discussions with several growers about “grand” vintages, and how perhaps 2020 isn't such a year. Inevitably, the conversation would turn to how this is sometimes an advantage, and how a really good vintage can be eminently more useful than a collection of wines bogged down by their own grandeur. I thought about how stunning many of the 2015s were, and how I left every meeting flabbergasted by the sheer intensity and almost palpable complexity of each lineup. And then I thought about how often I reach for one of the innumerable bottles of 2015 in my cellar, realizing that I probably haven't opened a single one since we sold out of the vintage… They're impressive and great and I’m glad that they exist, but my recollection is that few of them are fun or gulpable. Perhaps the greatest gift to people who love to drink wine is a very good vintage in the hands of extremely talented growers. This is 2020 German Riesling as you'll find it at Metrovino.
*It's imperative that I take the time to defend this to some extent. Of course we all prefer the idea of dry-farmed wines, and of terroirs that are hospitable enough to the grape varietal in question that irrigation is unnecessary. This has always been the case for Germany's classic Riesling regions, but the last three years were exceptional even in light of a few decades worth of creeping climate change. For many, it became a decision between giving the vines a portion of the water that nature was withholding, or to accept the certain death of some of their vineyards, most notably those with young vines. This is a decision that those of us who pontificate about viticultural values from the comfort of our wine shops, restaurants or homes don't have to face, and therefore judgment should be cast cautiously, if at all. Furthermore, please keep in mind that vines that are irrigated as a last resort are provided with far less water than they would have been if it would just fucking rain occasionally. The resulting wine will not taste like it came from pampered, lazy vines that are decoupled from their sites.
** Note that neither Leitz nor Spreitzer are mentioned here. That's only because we're still awaiting the arrival of their excellent 2019 GGs, and their 2020s hadn't yet completed élevage at the time of my visit.
