Update: Hofgut Falkenstein

At Hofgut Falkenstein, Erich and Johannes Weber are very excited about the quality of the 2015 vintage, which, for the first time, includes a couple of residually sweet Riesling Kabinett wines from old vines in the best section of the top-class Krettnacher Euchariusberg.

For the 2015 Euchariusberg Kabinett wines, the Webers acquired two additional old-vine parcels in the very priviledged site of Großschock, where they already have a large area of adjoining vineyards on the south-facing hillside. One of the new plots has old, ungrafted vines. They also leased or purchased other vineyards in Tächen ("little valley") in the last year. The most recent addition to their portfolio is a 0.2-ha parcel in "Ober Schäfershaus," a well-placed site in the best part of Krettnacher Altenberg. This is located by the church and has old vines, too. The soil is a mix of diabase (green basalt), quartz, and gray slate. Only a small section of Altenberg has diabase, which can also be found in Saarburger Rausch and in Avelsbach, near Trier. The first wine from this vineyard will be in 2016.

This year, they also tweaked the label a little more. The font is slightly different from Times New Roman and the color has a green rather than brown tint. This matches the typical 330-mm dark-green bottles used in the Saar region. They don't want to follow the trend towards showy extra-tall bottles or ever-smaller labels either. Their label is big and on lightly ribbed paper. But it has less of a cream tone now.

In addition, they decided to put "Saar" and the AP bottling number in bold print. The latter highlights their cask-by-cask bottlings, which is seldom done nowadays. In other words, each Fuder cask is bottled separately, instead of making blends among different casks. All of their wines ferment naturally with ambient yeasts and stay on the lees until bottling in March or April. (The Webers don't use a vacuum pump, much less a contract bottler.)

They'll continue to use the outmoded Prädikat designations (Kabinett and Spätlese) for trocken and feinherb wines, as they want to show that all their wines—whether bone-dry or nobly sweet—are unchaptalized. (For more on this, see "Koehler-Ruprecht Leaves the VDP.") Moreover, the new corks will have both the logo of the manor house and the vintage.

The Webers never add commercial enzymes, protein stabilizers, or clarifying agents (like charcoal). They don't de-acidify or concentrate the musts or wines, even if acidity levels are in double digits. The key is a low pH (2.7 for most of the 2015 Rieslings) and ripe acidity from good grapes, which are put via gravity (without pumping) into the pneumatic press.

Each wine comes from a certain place—namely, a distinct parcel or section within a given single-vineyard site, or Einzellage. They want to put this on the label, even if it's light and dry.

Their stony vineyards—many of which are underrated today—are farmed with no herbicides. The Webers prune them with just one flat cane per vine (between eight and 12 buds), and thus each plot is given the same chance to produce high-quality grapes with real substance. Therefore a light-bodied Riesling Kabinett trocken comes from old vines and low yields as well.

I hope to see some of you at Rieslingfeier and The Big Glou in NYC.

♦♦♦

Below is my short profile of Hofgut Falkenstein, with a list of the different Fuder casks, for the wine trade.

The Weber family farms about 8 hectares of mainly old Riesling vines—over 1 ha ungrafted—in a side valley of the Saar, known as Tälchen ("little valley"). In 1985, Erich Weber and his wife, Marita, built up the property of the then dilapidated Falkensteinerhof (established in 1901) from scratch. All the Riesling grapes are hand-harvested and the whole grapes are gently pressed in a pneumatic press for two to three hours. The musts are left overnight to settle naturally and are vinified with ambient yeasts in old oak Fuder casks. Their top vineyard sites are located on various south-facing hillsides, including the once highly rated Krettnacher Euchariusberg and Niedermenniger Herrenberg. The soil is primarily gray slate, with some quartz. The father-and-son team of Erich and Johannes Weber don’t use herbicides and believe in low yields (one cane per vine) to produce an array of light-bodied, unchaptalized dry (trocken), off-dry (feinherb), and sweet Saar Riesling wines—all of which are cask-by-cask bottlings. The 2015 Riesling harvest was from October 1 to 28. Below are the cask names, with a few short descriptions.

• 2015 Niedermenniger Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett trocken
  Fuder “Meyer neu”: an old-vine, high-density planting on a stony plateau (Neben Kaselshaidchen); electric.
  Fuder “Mutter Anna”: two plots with gnarly old vines and tiny grapes—a true Weber wine.
• 2015 Krettnacher Altenberg Riesling Spätlese trocken
  Fuder “Altenberg”: an ur-Weber plot in Diesseits des Enkers Weinberg, more topsoil; a late harvest and long fermentation.
  Fuder “Treif”: a southwest-facing site in Auf der Treif; a light-bodied, easy-drinking wine.
• 2015 Niedermenniger Sonnenberg Riesling Spätlese feinherb
  Fuder “Munny”: a steep slate hillock with a warmer microclimate and old vines.
• 2015 Niedermenniger Herrenberg Riesling Spätlese feinherb
  Fuder “Kleiner Klaus, Onkel Peter, Kleiner Herbert”: three different blocks in and around Zuckerberg; very old vines.
  Fuder “Deutschen, Palm, Meyer Mitte”: three old-vine blocks on the western side of the main Herrenberg slope; stony soil.
  Fuder “Zuckerberg”: in the Zuckerberg sector (Beim Triererweg); an approachable wine.
  Fuder “Großwald”: nearby Falkenstein in the place-name Großwald; very small, loose grape bunches; well balanced.
• 2015 Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Kabinett
  Fuder “Gisela”: a new core parcel of old, ungrafted vines in Großschock; an elegant Kabinett.
  Fuder “Kugel Peter”: next to Gisela, old (grafted) vines in Großschock; brisk.
• 2015 Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Spätlese
  Fuder “Mammen”: old vines in the steep slate slope of Großschock—a crystalline wine.
  Fuder “Großschock”: the first wine (Jungfernwein) from well-placed new plantings.
• 2015 Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Auslese
  Fuder “Förster, Ternes”: two steep, prime south-facing plots in Großschock; great sweet-acid interplay.
• 2015 Weißburgunder
  Fuder: a light-bodied Pinot Blanc from vines in Großwald.
• 2014 Spätburgunder
  Fuder: an authentic, semi-carbonic Pinot Noir from a 1980s planting nearby the house in Herrenberg.
• 2014 Saar Riesling Sekt brut
  Fuder “Meyer”: from the Großwald sector (Herrenberg); 12-plus months on the lees in bottle.
  (The 2015 base wine is a Fuder called “Egon” from the stony slope of Falkensteiner Hofberg.)

Most of the casks are named after the former owner, often a nickname. Others are an official place-name. There are a few casks not listed above. One is a Halbfuder of 2015 Oberemmeler Karlsberg Kabinett trocken, which is one of my favorites, along with "Mutter Anna" and "Meyer neu." As Ulli Stein says, these are bread-and-butter Mosel wines. Of course, those with more noticeable residual sugar are delicious, too. ♦