THE FEW, THE PROUD: 2023s FROM WILLI SCHAEFER

They are scant in number, and Christoph seemed apologetic at the paucity of high-Prädikat wines.

By now the entire 2024 vintage from Schaefer is on the market, so I know I am out-of-date, but I felt it best to wait – these are the last samples from the bunch I received many months ago – in order to give the wines a chance to calm down. I have come to a wariness with 2023, both in Germany and Austria, and often find it a troubled vintage whose nature can be exacerbated by  growers who make tensile racy wines. (It explains why Selbach’s was such a marked triumph in a difficult vintage, because Johannes and Sebastian understood the wines would need a little fluff to mitigate ‘23’s tendency to harshness.)

I do recognize the excellent Nahe wines – though in the central Nahe the price was a pathetically tiny crop – and as a rule the Pfalz dodged the worst of the vintage problems – especially among growers who make wines of vinosity as opposed to wines of explication.

So whatever my caveats, exceptions exist as they always do. Yet there are “exceptions” and there are “rules,” and the rule for ’23 is one of untrustworthy brilliance, because far too often the final impact of these Rieslings (especially) is one of rasping snarl. Thus I was seriously interested in whether (and how) the vintage would express at Willi Schaefer, whose wines I have known deeply in every vintage since 1971, and whose best vintages, almost without exception, are the warm ones.

In many cases Schaefers surmounted the vintage difficulties without completely eliminating them. To put it crudely, the wines are the best that ’23 can be, and still be ’23s. I might have gleaned a fuller picture, but three bottles in the case were smashed; alas most of the Spätleses, and I can only generalize based on what I could taste. My provisional view is that, in a year where it is enough for wines to be drinkable these are not only drinkable but often beautiful, and while it won’t go down in history as an all-time great, it must be considered a victory under difficult conditions.