Varietal: Riesling Spätlese
Vineyard Management: Sustainable
Winemaking: Native yeast inoculations, Whole Cluster pressing, Single Racking
Vegan: Yes
Typicity: Typical
Bio: Growing grapes along the Nahe and its many tributaries is always fraught with the threat of frost, wild boars and impossibly steep river banks. It’s no simple task. As the number of growers wanes, surprisingly, the ones that choose to remain find themselves awash in a newfound wave of recognition. To say winemaker Harald Hexamer is meticulous, is really glossing over how carefully he cultivates. He drastically limits yield with pruning. All harvests are completed by hand, and very late in the season. His fermentations begin with fruit that is below 12 Celsius and only native yeasts. The cooperage he chooses to use is all oak harvested from the local forest of Hunsrück, seasoning the wood five years.
This bottling of spätlese exemplifies Harald’s ability to tease out utterly decadent, ripe Anjou pears with clover honey while simultaneously preserving tense acidity that lets us find our way to undercurrents of wet slate and smoky minerality.
