Einleitung | introduction
Last year I began the vintage report noting the relatively unenthused market, wondering whether it was all “because of inflation and wars, or because of our politics and the decline of western culture, or our lack of collective resolve, empathy and humanity, etc. and so forth.”
If the angst of last year was rather diffuse and vague, heading into the election with so much uncertainty, this year it feels much different. Now at least we know very specifically why we’re all freaking out. That’s something, I guess?
I don’t know if anyone really cares, but it just feels insane to me to try and discuss the wines of 2024 without talking a little bit about our life, our lives, in 2025 – and the world of wine in 2025.
In a way it feels like a tale of two cities. You know the quote: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
It feels like something of a cruel joke. At the exact moment the renaissance of German wine hits a very obvious, undeniable pinnacle (“it was the best of times”), the global market of wine begins to unravel (“it was the worst of times”).
One high, one low, and an ocean of complexity between the two. Where does it all go from here? No one knows.
Yet, taking the long view, this reset could allow for a more focused world of wine with quality over quantity and gimmicks – for all of the wine producing countries.
I also can’t help but feel that as the amount of polished, of-the-moment, algorithm-based consumer garbage washes over us at an unprecedented pace – some of it non-alcoholic with slick packaging! – a desire for something, anything, actually real will rise among us. The more I live in this world of 2025, the more I believe that wine is going to become a central part of the analogue lifestyle that is coming. We can hope.
For myself, in Germany at least, I talk to many of the young growers, fighting to save this culture, and I think to myself: There is reason to hope.
I write all of this, I suppose, to once again firmly sew our hearts onto our sleeves, in case you hadn’t noticed already: Germany, and the culture of German wine, is our overriding purpose and passion. Unwisely, as any financial advisor would tell you, we have not diversified.
The hope is there’s some room in this fast-paced, surface-dwelling culture for something slower, and hopefully, deeper.
We hope this vintage report is of some use; we hope the fuller context of German viticulture, the work we do every day and every year focusing on Germany, offers you value. We hope, verily, that when you think of German wine, you think of us and our growers… and you support our growers. The truth is we have no Sancerre to sell, no BTG-able Chianti. We have nothing else to fall back onto.
This extreme focus is a huge advantage, I think…. but it is also a huge liability.
Thank you. As always, with any questions whatsoever, we (a real human and not an autoresponder) are here: orders@vomboden.com
die Weine | the wines – summary
Normally, I try and weave one of my favorite games – the vintage comparison game! – cleverly into the body of this essay, using a few specific references to highlight or contrast a point I’m trying to make. What I want to do is to make the experience of learning about a vintage feel natural, easy. I want to cut it all up into bite-sized pieces for easy digestion.
Most of the time it’s all very sophisticated and savvy.
This year, however, I’m just going to reference every vintage I’ve heard because it’s a spectacular list. And it is enlightening, I think, in a non-logical way. I will discuss after.
In reverse-chronological order, I have heard 2024 compared to: 2021, 2017, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2008, 2004, 2002.
Depending on your German vintage literacy, you might note a basic theme: These are all fairly cool (to very cool) vintages.
The part of me that has a mortgage and is wildly concerned about ballooning healthcare costs, wants to tell you that 2024 is, in fact, a hypothetical blend of vintages 2021, 2017, 2008 and 2004 – perhaps my four favorite vintages of the last quarter-century.
And while this is partly true, and while 2024 is a thrilling vintage for us purists, I’m not going to bury the lede: It’s all a bit more complicated than this.
What really seems most poignant about the list of vintages is not any specific year referenced, but rather the fact that there are so many references – that no one seems to really be able to place a finger on the magic, the style, the essence of 2024.
Julian Haart, who always enjoys calling someone else’s bullshit, said all these references are wrong. He said to me that 2024 is probably most like something from the 1990s, though he couldn’t name an exact vintage.
“What do you want from me? I never harvested in the 1990s, you know? But the old guys tell me maybe 1993 or 1996.”
I wasn’t tasting German wines on release in the 1990s either. But I did pose this question (“Is 2024 like a vintage from the 1990s?”) to a number of the older growers I know, wanting to explore Julian’s theory in more depth, but it didn’t really stick. I think just too much time has passed for many of them.
This fact, however, doesn’t mean there isn’t a deep truth in this idea. From my own headspace, I feel like the fact that so many growers cannot really find an easy contemporary comparison to 2024 points to a complicated truth like this. To be honest, I can’t really remember a vintage where this game wasn’t kind of easy, or at least easier.
I personally like the idea that 2024 is an echo from the 1990s very much.
Could it be that 2024 is some sort of magical second chance? Our opportunity to go back in time and to appreciate what we took for granted when we had it? Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” but instead of the profundity of simple domestic togetherness, what we get is just the profundity of a very good vintage from an era that we thought was over?
One more chance, to hold in our hands, that which is likely to disappear?
The paradoxical and sad truth is that in the 1990s, all the wine world wanted was fireworks-and-fruit with juice as thick as velvet and alcohol levels as close as possible to schnapps. And, with few exceptions, at least in Germany, all the 1990s could offer us was chamber music, on vinyl, in a delicately appointed room.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
That vinyl, that restraint in adornment, that things that felt insufficient twenty years ago… well, they sound really fucking nice now?
There is just something uncanny, unfamiliar, thrilling, and surprising about the extreme lightness and airy finesse of 2024. Alcohol levels – for totally dry wines – can be as low as 10% or 11%.
Maybe 2024 offers us something of a vinous time capsule.
Maybe this is the most perfect vintage for this most-unperfect moment.
The vintage 2024 does not have the razzle-dazzle of 2021, the shrieking missile fired into the sun… but it does have something calm, restrained, not-obvious, delicate, and subtle.
In the 1990s, less was less. In 2024, less is more?
I began tasting wines on release from maybe 2001 on, though obviously less extensively or as focused as I do now. I began working in wine retail in 2005 just as the 2004s began to hit the market. And for me, sorry Julian, this really is the vintage that seems to most closely mirror 2024. There is something about the extreme lightness and brightness of the wines – their non-fruity aromatics, their lifted delicacy.
Are we in 2004? Or the 1990s?
Who the hell knows, but the fact we have to look back to cooler times, to cooler vintages, to eras defined by finesse and delicacy when we talk about 2024, I think is a very good thing. While the vintage does not have the brazen, in-your-face quality of 2021, with all the strobe lights and crashing cymbals, this is the vintage that the growers bring up most often.
“The vintage is a blend of 2021 and [insert another vintage here].”
Julian Haart and Stein – two people who just don’t bullshit – both said they enjoyed at the moment 2024 perhaps more than 2021. Vintage 2024 is more integrated, more elegant. If the shock of 2021 is that slap in the face of acidity; 2024 is as slick as a pickpocket – if you’re not paying attention these wines dance right by.
While 2021 remains ferocious, I think there is a deep level of beauty in 2024 right now – with, I might add, the stuffing and concentration to make old bones. As with the best 1990s, these are wines that will go twenty to thirty years and longer.
It’s curious, we don’t often talk about beauty when we talk about wine, but that’s exactly what this vintage has, in a more classic sense. It is not showy, not loud, there is no obvious hook on which to hold (or to use in the promotion), yet this very fact is at the essence of its deeper pleasure.
I think for those paying attention, for those interested in scale and modesty, in detail and intricacy, this will be a profoundly satisfying vintage, yes a great vintage, and one that, well, when it’s all gone we’ll wish we had more of.
And that is maybe the only thing one can say, definitely, of vintage 2024. There won’t be that much of it around – we’ll explain why in the next chapter.
das Wetter | the weather
The story of vintage 2024 begins, unfortunately, with two nights of devastating frosts towards the end of April. A mild winter and warm March had jumpstarted the vines’ growth and so many young shoots, all tender and green, were exposed when the frosts came.
While the survey of damages feels a bit random and inexplicable, as one would expect, the colder regions, valleys and side valleys were the most damaged.
If the main valley of the Mosel with its protecting warmth from the river was somewhat spared, the Saar and Ruwer valleys, and all the side valleys, the nooks and crannies, were ravaged. Egon Müller lost nearly 85%. Egon called it the toughest vintage he’s had since 1986; there will only be a few thousand bottles from the estate in 2024, though in a valiant **** you to the frosts, he did produce both an Auslese and a Beerenauslese, both serious feats in this vintage.
Lauer, also on the Saar, lost around 80% of this new, young growth. Maximin Grünhaus in the Ruwer lost everything; Karthauserhof is a similar story.
In the Nahe, Emrich-Schönleber was also hit; the numbers here were about the same as at Lauer, around 80%. Glow Glow in the side valley off the Nahe lost nearly 40%.
Once we leave these three valleys – the Ruwer, Saar and Nahe – the stories aren’t quite as bad. They definitely get more complicated; there is no simple narrative. There were some problems everywhere.
Becker had nearly half of a normal harvest, both because of frost and Peronospora. In Franconia, however, Stefan Vetter was mostly spared from the frosts. Wein Goutte and Leipold suffered some damage, yet were able to come through with ok quantities.
I’m sure there were places that had some losses in the Rheinhessen, but I haven’t heard any horror stories. Carsten Saalwächter in the cold north lost about 15%. Moritz Kissinger in and around Nierstein made it through intact. Keller and Seehof did not have frost issues in their sites in the Wonnegau – only one of Keller’s tiny sites, a tiny clos in Neu-Bamberg, had bad losses.
Brand and Hammelmann in the Pfalz were more or less ok.
In Württemberg, Beurer’s vineyards in Stetten were mostly spared, while only forty-five minutes to the north Roterfaden in Rosswag lost around 70%.
Baden, in the south, had places that were affected, but in general the further south you travel, the less trouble frosts were. Wasenhaus, just south of Freiburg, had no issues whatsoever with frost.
It’s important to remember that vines are tough plants. So, when they have their young shoots killed by frosts, they don’t give up for the year. They begin to grow new shoots. After a bad frost, there is nearly always what’s called a “second growth.” Depending on a number of factors, this second growth can help to mitigate the initial losses. Lauer told me that about 25% of the damaged vines did in fact sprout new growth that was about four weeks behind the first growth. This means that even horrible losses can, with luck, be somewhat recovered. In other words, Lauer in the end did not lose 80% of a normal harvest; Grünhaus and Karthauserhof did not lose everything. Both estates will for sure bottle some wine.
But it’s complicated. The second growth is by definition, inevitably, behind the first growth regarding development – in Lauer’s case he said about four weeks. What this means, in the end, depends on the vintage. In a very warm vintage being four weeks behind might not be a bad thing. In a cold vintage, it might mean the grapes won’t ripen enough to be usable. In nearly all cases, the second growth brings less quantity and a different quality. Often there is enough of a quality difference between the two growths that the growers will declassify the second-growth grapes. What would have been a 1er Cru or Grand Cru, becomes instead a village or estate bottling.
This is why, as a specific example, for Lauer we’ll have roughly the normal quantities for wines like “Barrel X” and “Senior” – there was enough very good second-growth fruit to bring to these bottlings. However, as one moves up the quality scale, the quantities drop precipitously. I cover this later in the “die Weine” section, but Lauer bottled only 390 bottles of his Grand Cru “Stirn” – the U.S. will receive about 15 cases. It’s a similar story at Emrich-Schönleber: The estate bottling and “Mineral” are close to normal in terms of quantities; things get much more sparse after that.
For all the horror of the April frosts for many estates, the spring turned into summer, and the summer began more or less average, though in the end two qualities best describe the growing season of 2024: rainy and cold.
May in many regions was very wet and rainy, and this is a delicate and dangerous moment for the young berries. Like newborns, they are more vulnerable than their older counterparts, and Peronospora (downy mildew) was an issue, especially for organic growers whose topical sprays washed away. Note this does not affect the long-term quality of the grapes, it affects the quantities. So for many spared from the frosts of April, May was the season of loss.
Indeed, the organic estates we work with suffered terribly. (As a bureaucratic sidenote: Until 2014, phosphoric acid was permitted under organic viticulture. It is far and away the most effective treatment for Peronospora. The E.U., led by the arid winemaking cultures of southern France, Italy, and Spain, where Peronospora is normally not a problem, outlawed its use for organic viticulture in 2015, dealing a devastating blow to their northern, wet, neighbors. Being more or less an oblivious American, I can’t claim to have profound insights into the inner-workings of the E.U., but it seems plausible that the more agricultural south relished, just a bit, putting the industrial north in a bad place. Certainly, many German winemakers feel like they were given the short end of the stick. Curiously, after a wet and problematic 2023 vintage in parts of Spain and Portugal, word is that phosphoric acid may be allowed, again, into the pantheon of organic viticulture. Let’s see.)
For the most part though, aside from random remarks about “The worst summer barbecue season ever!” it was not a particularly stressful year during the summer months, at least for most growers I spoke with. I was in Germany for nearly half of the summer; for me, as a non-grower, it was lovely. At least in the Mosel, where I was with my family, it was warm and pleasant during the day and cool, almost cold, in the evenings. We’d put on sweatshirts or sweaters in the evening, sitting out on the terrace at Haus Waldfrieden. (My son and nephew are photographed, above, on said terrace, in late July of 2024.)
It was after I left, as it were, that everything got even more complicated.
September and October turned grey and cold and rainy. And here is where the idea of a cohesive vintage plot disintegrates, torn into a million unique narratives based on each grower’s village, geography, the specific qualities of the site(s), rain, or lack of rain, size, preparation, and labor.
This is probably a good moment to reference my essay, “The Vintage Report is Dead: On Scale, Labor, and Heat.”
For vintage 2024, this cooler weather meant that ripeness levels began to slow down or to stall out completely. Talking with Philip Lardot in the Mosel in mid-September, he told me most of the Riesling was still around 70 Oechsle (this is not ripe) with acidities still in the low teens. I spoke with Stein in early October and he had really done only the preharvest, picking the best grapes for the liter bottling; measurements were now between 70 and 75 Oechsle – acidities remained high at around 12 grams per liter.
For purists, for sharp, paring-knife wines, these numbers are perfect. I was not unhappy listening to all this, I must admit. I thought to myself, quietly, “Damn this sounds a lot like 2021.” And that was an exciting thought, for me.
Yet the complications of the 2024 harvest involve many things, like the already-mentioned rain.
While it was a wet vintage throughout the year – Lauer provides the amazing statistic that only three vintages since 1881 were wetter than 2024 – for some places it was especially wet in September and October. (If you guessed 1882, 1965 and 2000 as the other three vintages wetter than 2024, you are a very strange bird indeed, but you do get a gold star.)
It was, more or less, the same general story – different exact details – from all of the growers: “Things look good, we will harvest something tomorrow.”
Then I would hear the next week that they only had two days, or one day, or half a day to harvest, and then the rain started again.
This, more or less, was the case for everyone in 2024. Yes, it rained. But then, after the rains, after things dried out, not all that much had changed: ripeness levels and acidity levels were basically the same. The growers could go back to harvesting.
Julian Haart said: “2024 had rain, ok, but no fog. It would rain, but then an hour later everything is dry. It’s the fog that scares me – then everything is wet for a while…”
In the end, what saved this vintage, and will perhaps prove to define it, were two key factors, and they are related.
First, the sun basically disappeared after mid-September. As this was the post-veraison period for the grapes – meaning the grapes’ skins had by now changed color and were thin and quite sensitive to the light and heat – this is not an unimportant detail.
Lauer has a great line: “The most beautiful flavors thrive in the shade.”
Name three other vintages in the last twenty years with very little sun during harvest? If you said 2008, 2013 and 2015 you get another gold star.
The second key factor is largely related to the first: Namely, it was cold.
If you did read my provocative essay, “The Vintage Report is Dead: On Scale, Labor, and Heat,” you heard me talk about the Riesling harvests of yore, wherein the cooler climate and later harvest months (normally October and November) acted in some ways like a refrigerator, keeping things fresh and stable.
And yes, while I said in my essay that these long, slow harvests are largely a thing of the past, 2024 turns out to be the exception. This was one of the longer harvests for many. Lukas Hammelmann, who granted is making sparkling wines and picking Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in addition to his Rieslings, said his harvest went for six weeks, his longest ever.
Yes, there was some rot and there had to be sorting – but again, the cooler temperatures kept things from getting out of hand – there was very little to no botrytis in 2024. It was just too cold. Julian Haart, always the poet, said to me plainly. “There’s no magic with 2024: You just had to put your head down and do the work.”
Stein said the birds were crazy-hungry. But he understood and was even sympathetic: The April frosts had also damaged a lot of fruit trees – there just was not much for them to eat.
The story of 2024 is the following: If you did your work, the quality could be exceptional – truly exceptional – as we’ll discuss.
But it was another very tough vintage economically: low yields and high labor costs, at least if you really wanted that “truly exceptional.”
die Weine | the wines – our new system
In reviewing the wines, going forward, we are going to have three rough categories.
We’ll discuss the basic dry Riesling and Prädikat Rieslings of the new vintage – in this case the 2024ers. We’ll offer preliminary thoughts on the “Grand Cru” dry Rieslings of the vintage, but more and more this just feels foolish. These wines need at least a year post-vintage to really even begin to reveal themselves.
So, to correct this fact, we will begin to write a bit more about the “Grand Cru” dry Rieslings of the previous year – in this case that would be the 2023ers.
Finally, as the amount of German wine grows that isn’t bottled until later in the year post-harvest, or even in the spring of the following year, we will review these separately. These can be Rieslings (such as from Philip Lardot or Julien Renard), but mostly we are talking about wines made from Silvaner, Weissburgunder, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, to name just the most obvious. I suspect Pinot Noir, and the red wine vintage in Germany, will become a more and more important part of these reports.
We just want to be more honest to the growing complexity of German viticulture.
die Weine | the wines – 2024 basic dry Rieslings and Prädikat Rieslings
The defining quality of the 2024 Rieslings is their lightness, their extreme delicacy. It’s like all the wines are three-quarter scale, or that they are woven with maybe 20% helium, or some unknown substance lighter than air.
Curiously, especially as this is a relatively high-acid vintage, it is the scale of 2024ers that is their defining quality, not the acidity.
I want to be a bit careful here, because while some wines – the basic dry Rieslings of many of our producers – are quite sharp indeed, many of the wines of 2024 are not overly cutting, tensile or angular. The acidity is there, for sure, but somehow it feels more like a cooling energy. It is smooth, polished, and integrated into the wines themselves. It does not feel like a citric scalpel or an acid bat.
The difference, essentially, is the pH: a complicated measurement that to some extent shapes how one feels the acidity in a liquid. A wine can have the same total acidity level (let’s say an acidity of 8 grams per liter, high but not crazy for a Riesling) and if the pH is low, let’s say 2.7, the wine feels sharp, even painful. This, in a nutshell, is the vintage 2021.
Vintage 2024, in general, has high acidity (yet often not quite as high as 2021), but the greatest difference is that the pHs are higher. Instead of the 2.7 from 2021, we have 2.9, and this small numerical change alters quite a bit about how the wines feel.
The “classic” part of this classic vintage really speaks more to the scale of the wines. Yet the wines also in general show less obvious plump or ripe fruit. In fact, in many of the basic dry Rieslings and even the Prädikat Rieslings, the fruit feels like something of an afterthought. And where there is fruit, it speaks a high-toned language of grapefruit, citrus oils and green apples.
Throughout all the wines the most prominent tones are cool, intense, with profoundly vibrant aromatics that are part herbal (mint, flower stems, dill, borage, fennel, anise), super floral and very mineral (slate, chalk, sea salt, ocean spray, rock candy).
Remember that Lauer line? “The most beautiful flavors thrive in the shade.”
To make this question of “scale” more concrete: In 2024 I rarely heard of ripeness levels much above 85 or 88 Oechsle. There are almost no Auslesen, very few Spätlesen, and a whole hell of a lot of Kabinetts and feinherbs. Sure, some people probably hit numbers in the 90s, but these are the exceptions not the rules. (In this context, the fact that Egon made both an Auslese and a Beerenauslese, is remarkable.”)
As a point of reference, 88 Oechsle would give you a potential alcohol of 11.86% in a dry wine, give or take. And these are the ripest wines of 2024.
Is the feinherb the sweet spot for the 2024 Rieslings? Or an old-school style of riveting Kabinett, reminiscent in some ways of 2021? Probably, yes.
I did read an Instagram post from Keller, from mid-June of this year (so very recently), where he wrote: “Vintage 2024 is an absolutely outstanding year for Kabinett. I think 2024 could be the great rival of the 2021 vintage… time will tell.”
That said, many of the basic dry wines are so mouthwatering and evaporative – I love them. They are so light they nearly drink themselves, seeming to turn to Riesling-mist just as they make contact with your palate. The sensation is thrilling honestly – if perhaps a bit too serious for a more normal drinker.
Julian Haart’s “1,000L” is, in 2024, a dry wine that clocks in at only 10% alcohol. Ludes, Stein, and Vollenweider all roll in with quivering dry Rieslings at about 11% alcohol – though the real alcohols are probably lower. (How cute is it that in Germany, for the most part, growers still round up their alcohol levels?)
Weiser-Künstler’s feinherb, with the owl label, is a heartbreaking wine. With only 19 grams of residual sugar and 9% alcohol, the wine is featherweight and just expansive with fresh-toned fruit, ocean-spray aromatics and an extreme florality (again, that is 2024).
For me, these in a way are the most serious Mosel drinker’s Mosel wines. There is no status to be had with them, they are barely Instagram-worthy, yet they are so purely Mosel. They so clearly speak to what this place is, with its old-vine heritage, its needle-fine architecture, its singularity. And they can be had for cents on the dollar. There is an argument to be made that one should drink these as one drinks water.
All across the Mosel we have collections of petite proportions, our vinous time capsules.
With Julian Haart there is probably not that much that should be said; it’s a superb collection. He and Nadine are special talents and the wines are worth the hype. The “Rote Erden” this year will blow your mind; 100% Grand Cru fruit from the Frauenberg (which will not be bottled this year because, well, it’s all in the damn “Rote Erden”).
The young Julian Ludes delivered pure energy, three-quarter scale with 1.5 times the energy. The 2024ers are right up there with his 2021ers and the often-overlooked, but still insanely good, 2022ers. He produced no fewer than nine different Kabinetts, entering a truly heroic level of vineyard specificity-absurdity topped only by the madman of the Saar, Florian Lauer. There is a Kabinett Trocken from the “Monster” parcel (yes, I am asking for magnums and double-magnums), two dry Kabinetts that aren’t legally dry though they taste dry (you’ll find these listed as a Kabinett “t”), two Kabinett feinherbs and then four single-parcel Kabinetts.
Glory, glory, hallelujah: Who doesn’t fucking love German wine? Make it more confusing, less efficient, less easily digestible by AI and Instagram; this is culture in all its beauty.
The Kabinetts of young Max Kilburg are thrilling; they are sharper-than-normal feeling. Max told me: “In the Mosel a Kabinett is legal at 73 degrees Oechsle, so why do we wait for 80?” Most of his Kabinetts were harvested at around 75 Oechsle and will rush your palate with 40-50 grams residual sugar and acidities at around 11 or higher.
AND there is an ultra-rare, old-vine bottling that will come out of the Ohligsberg this year – only a few hundred liters made.
The legendary Ulli Stein has found himself in a great place in 2024. At this young age, he says he likes the 2024ers more than the 2021ers; they are more balanced. He says the vintage is a mix of 2023 (the charm) and 2021 (the acid and focus). As with the situation at Ludes, there will be nothing above the Kabinett-level – there is no Palmberg Spätlese Trocken and the “1900” is again a Kabinett Trocken. Buy everything Stein, as always.
When we get to Vollenweider and Weiser-Künstler we are, unfortunately, talking about two certified organic growers trying to walk the razor’s edge in a vintage like 2024. In both cases, the quality is just glorious, the quantities disastrous.
Moritz Hoffmann at Vollenweider is bringing this estate to new heights. Part of me has this strange feeling that this estate will, finally, break through. I have the sense that Vollenweider could go in the same direction as Julian Haart – the wines are just that undeniably great. Let’s see. For the moment, you can buy them all with ease. And you should.
Weiser-Künstler presents an amazing collection; the form of the vintage suiting their sensibilities. But they suffered great losses, both from the frosts and Peronospora. Their harvest was exquisite, but meager. How’s this for transparency: One-hundred-and-sixty-seven cases, total, of their angelic feinherb for the United States. Among the five other wines (Trarbacher dry, Gaispfad Kabinett Trocken, Sonnenlay Kabinett, Ellergrub Kabinett and Ellergrub Spätlese) there are 105 cases total. That translates to about twenty cases of each, total, for the entire country.
Any bottle in your hand should be seen as a testament to the will of beautiful human endeavors and, it probably should be said, of suffering.
Lauer, in the Saar, also suffered great losses in 2024, as we mentioned, yet the wines are an absolute triumph. The vintage presents the old-school Saar at its absolute finest, a vintage that without a doubt reminds me of 2008.
The vintage also absolutely played perfectly into Lauer’s complex dry-tasting and feinherb styles, with wines that can often have residual sugar, but rarely much. The basic bottlings, like No. 3 and No. 4, are just soaring. Stirn is epic, recalling the great Stirns of the early aughts. This would be amazing news, if the fact wasn’t that this parcel (and the tiny vineyard Lambertskirch) was hit worst by the frosts.
More behind the scenes: I was allocated 15 cases of Stirn, total. To which I obviously complained like a spoiled, lazy importer and Florian responded: “Stephen, you get 50% of the production; we filled in total 390 bottles of Stirn.”
I responded with an apology and a thank you, though it was barely discernable, what with my foot so completely stuffed into my mouth.
Outside the Mosel, sugar levels were further advanced than the Mosel and Saar, but they were still modest.
Emrich-Schönleber in the Nahe presents a collection that could be described in purely cooling terms – awash in blues and greens, no fruit in sight but instead pure mineral distillates. The regular program remains – however quantities in Halenberg and Niederberg were 40% of the norm.
The story repeats itself: Beautiful wines, disastrous quantities.
In Franconia, Peter Leipold’s 2024ers are invigorating, brisk in their tensile form and absolutely shimmering, as is his style. Lightness, buoyed with a bit of phenolic, textural components that adds stuffing and carries the fresh acidity the vintage gifted the wines.
The Pfalz might be the one region that was spared in 2024. With heavy enough soils to buoy the precipitous rainfall and warmth to more easily get classical ripeness levels. Still, even here, in the land of “sunny abundance,” the vintage still proves zesty, fresh, elegant and unlike any of the recent past decade.
Lukas Hammelmann, again, proves to be some sort of magician. Even the quality of the entry-level soil and village wines was of astounding quality. Selfishly, we can’t wait to get these wines in. They could be the best yet from this estate?
Again, let’s see.
die Weine | the wines – 2023 Grand Cru Dry Rieslings
Why it is that a Kabinett Trocken reveals itself, to some degree, in the spring following the harvest and a “GG” or Spätlese or Auslese Trocken takes another year to say anything? Honestly, I don’t know.
But I do know this is the case.
And so here, in the spring of 2025, it feels beyond foolish to comment on the Grand Cru dry Rieslings of 2024. They are just too young; most are still in barrels, still on the lees. Most estates won’t be bottling them until the summer (at earliest); others won’t bottle until after the harvest. Most estates really won’t be releasing them until the fall of this year anyway; we try every year to delay as much as we can the actual sale of the wines until the winter of the following year.
So, we’ll talk about the Grand Cru dry Rieslings of 2024 next year. Now let’s talk about the 2023 releases?
It would probably be worth a quick review of our 2023 vintage. I called our report “Diamonds and the Rough” because it was a tricky vintage. I think it was an exacting vintage, with a very specific line between ripe and over-ripe… and many growers did overstep this line.
And so we do have wines that are too ripe, that sag a bit under ripe and, sometimes, rather ponderous fruit. Yet the growers who pressed the breaks and were able to bring the vintage to a close before crossing the line, they made simply superb Grand Cru dry wines.
Remember, in general warmer vintages (especially in cooler climates, like the Mosel and Saar) are quite good for dry Rieslings; we in fact want the acids to be a bit less bracing, a bit less aggressive.
And so it is that 2023 could be seen, for some, as a breakthrough vintage for dry Rieslings. I would argue, along with the growers themselves, that 2023 is among the greatest-ever vintages for the Grand Cru dry Rieslings of Weiser-Künstler and Vollenweider. Konstantin and Alexandra think it’s the best dry Riesling vintage of the last decade, at least in the Mosel. At least for them. Their wines are spellbinding, deep and botanical.
Moritz Hoffmann at Vollenweider thinks 2023 is the best dry vintage the estate has ever had – and after going through the lineup, I have to agree… and more. The wines do seem to present this reality: They are staggering.
The basic village-wine, the Wolfer, is sourced from 80-year-old vines. It’s a lovely wine, delicately balancing itself between Stein’s “Blauschiefer,” a wine of rigorous honesty, and let’s say Julian Haart’s Piesporter, a village-level wine that remains one of my favorite Haart bottlings.
Then, in 2023, there is the single-parcel, village-level bottling “Gelbe Weide,” sourced from a tiny parcel of old vines, all of them single-pole trained. It is an absolutely inane thing to do, but the wine has its own voice. Only 500 liters were made. It flaunts incredible intensity and depth.
Then we arrive at the three truly Grand Cru dry Rieslings from Vollenweider in 2023. These are among the greatest dry Mosel Rieslings I’ve tasted, from anyone and any vintage. These are so profoundly Mosel, so etched and slatey and linear and minimalist, it makes me want to cry. I have the feeling that these, in youth, will be too serious for most people – they are absolutely unforgiving. Yet I also have the feeling that in five to ten-plus years, they will be simply profound.
The Goldgrube Grand Cru Trocken is linear and salty; this is structured and deeply serious, yet drinkable as well. There is an intensity here that is paired with a lightness, despite the power of the vintage. This is a wine that evaporates in the glass or, put another way, the first bottle empty on the table. Sourced from 120-year-old vines.
The “Aurum” is a special, old-vine parcel in the Goldgrube; the oldest vines they have. This is only the fourth vintage they have made the wine (2016, 2017, 2018 and now 2023); only 300 liters made. It is very similar to the Goldgrube, yet with more density and more texture. More amplitude.
Finally, there is the “Schimbock,” sourced from a tiny vineyard just downstream from the Goldgrube. This is a beautiful, 0.5-hectare parcel of single-pole-trained, old, ungrafted vines. While Daniel historically did more skin contact with the wine, to give it volume and texture, Moritz is pressing it directly and the wine just has incredible cut to it. This is one of the most incisive and linear dry wines of the Mosel in 2023.
These are, for me, break-through wines. There is no other way to put it.
Becker also presents his wines around a year behind everyone else, and so his 2023ers will be coming soon. His collection presents, appropriately, the profile of a riper vintage with only two dry Kabinetts, two dry Spätlesen and five dry Auslesen, some of which push all the way to 14% alcohol.
Hans-Josef, now in his eightieth year, has what feels like a calm command of the vintage. The Kabinetts are light, fresh and lively, the two Spätlese Trocken from the Walkenberg (a normal bottling and an “old-vine” bottling as is the estate’s practice) are simply perfect.
Then, in what is one of the most serious flexes of the vintage, Becker presents five dry Auslesen, from 13% alcohol up to 14.5%. These are staggering wines with a textural density and weight, yet rigorous (and I mean rigorous) form, with acids that creep up very close to 10 grams per liter – which is a lot.
Hans-Josef, and his wines, are just their own thing, always and hopefully forever.
die Weine | the wines – 2023 White and Red Wine Releases
As I said in the intro to the last section, it would probably be worth a quick review of our 2023 vintage. I called our report “Diamonds and the Rough” because it was a tricky vintage. I think it was an exacting vintage, with a very specific line between ripe and over-ripe… and many growers did overstep this line.
Yet, some version of why certain 2023 Grand Cru dry Rieslings in the Mosel can be so great must inform the general narrative that also lends itself to the dry Rieslings from the growers I’ll bunch under my own category called the “Neue Moselle.” This group of growers might be called “natural winemakers,” but they are, in fact, simply letting the wines age longer in barrel and are bottling, nearly always unfiltered, after the wines have gone through malolactic conversions.
What we have, to my sensibility, is a Mosel wine that speaks a bit to what we might think of as “Jura-esqe,” meaning wines with higher acidities, in certain cases a slight oxidation, or a reduction. Yet these wines of the “Neue Moselle” are nearly always much more linear, more delicate and porcelain – they rarely get much above 12% in alcohol and can clock in well below this.
The young grower Julien Renard would be a case in point. Working in Winningen, in the Terrassen-Mosel, Julien’s 2023ers are slivers, splinters even, that cut right into your palate leaving a botanical, mineral water, garden-fresh sensibility behind. On the nose, Julien’s 2023 Riesling hints (maybe?) at the warmth of the vintage with a mouthwatering white peach presence, yet the overall feel is green apple, grapefruit, and lime, a spring garden (extreme florality), ocean spray and saline minerals. The cliff-vineyards of the Terrassen-Mosel could easily deal with the rains of 2023 – and you feel this ease in the wines.
Similarly, Philip Lardot and Rosalie Curtin have made one of their best vintages. The basic “Kontakts” are super – clean and direct, stern as a Mosel wine should be… yet not too stern. The white, parts of which were bottled under the “Save the Mosel” label, is a blend of Riesling, Müller-Thurgau, and Auxerrois, one of the more generally convincing cuvées I’ve tasted. The “Kontakt” red, a Pinot Noir, is lithe and lovely; that “red Riesling” people speak of but rarely deliver.
The single-vintage bottlings will need more time, so we have to go back to 2022 if we are going to talk current-release what I suppose you’d call “Grand Cru,” or at least single-vineyard, Rieslings. “Der Bauer,” the farmer, is a single-vineyard Riesling sourced completely from old, ungrafted vines in the St. Aldegunder Himmelreich. The awesome “Die Winzerin,” is sourced completely from very old, ungrafted vines in the St. Aldegunder Palmberg. If you can find these wines, buy them.
In the limestone-riddled upper Mosel, or Obermosel, Jonas Dostert also crafted a superb collection of 2023ers. These are very singular wines, extreme in their linear presentation of mineral, but they are a touch more generous than normal in 2023. And I mean this in a good way. As in, they are not so extreme. Still, most normal people will think these are too extreme and will wonder what the hell anyone is talking about if they think of 2023 as a ripe vintage.
Like we said, if you were able to not cross the line, there is a fine-ness to 2023 – especially in cooler climates.
Leaving the Mosel, 2023 will undoubtedly prove to be a great vintage for Burgundian grapes from many of the growing regions. This is not a subtle effect, when you taste Chardonnays and Weissburgunders (Pinot Blancs) with warmth and ripeness balanced by an appropriately stern core of fresh, lively acidity. Similar in warmth and body to the 2020ers and the 2022ers, vintage 2023 seems to show a bit less brooding, less heaviness, and instead feels brighter, clearer, with a bit more freshness.
As if out of nowhere (or at least just very quickly), the Chardonnays of Germany are finding a unique place in what can be a rather broad and boring pantheon. There have been some profound bottlings, but they’ve felt a bit like Athena – springing from the head of Zeus without much context or explanation.
Now, there is a broader consistency, a sensibility. Many 2023 Chardonnays seem to finally show a bit of restraint and more truth to place.
In the north of the Rheinhessen, Carsten Saalwächter and Moritz Kissinger continue to make the most compelling whites of this younger guard. For Saalwächter the wines are plumper than the 2022ers, yet firm and clear. Saalwächter is a Silvaner specialist, and always the wines have a demanding structure. For Kissinger, the Chardonnay and Weissburgunder are more meditative, awash in minerals but also a good touch of nuttiness and a waxy slendernesss.
Further south, in the Hügelland of Westhofen and Flörsheim-Dalsheim, Florian Fauth at Weingut Seehof is turning out, ever-sharper and clearer Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs. While his Grand Cru Chardonnay Steingrube has been an insider’s wine for a few years, Seehof has turned out beautiful, lighter estate-level versions of both of these grapes in 2024.
Over the past few years Keller has also been expanding the repertoire; in 2023 we will have a number of single-vineyard Chardonnays as well as a “von der Fels”-like bottling called “Talfels.” These are simply category-leaders, there can be no doubt.
Across the board the 2023 Pinot Noirs too will begin to enter the market this spring and fall.
Down south in Baden, at Wasenhaus, the Spätburgunders presented as more elegant, fresh, yet still plenty of depth and mineral raciness. One wonders: If 2022 was a breakthrough vintage and one of incredible depth, will 2023 give it a run and be a bit more approachable for the years to come?
These stories, of 2024 and 2023 and everything before, will unfurl for our delight and wisdom for years to come. What a pleasure it will be getting to know them better.