Product information

A.J.Adam Dhroner Hofberg Kabinett Riesling 2017

Riesling from Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Mosel, Germany

$66

$63ea in any 3+
$60ea in any 6+
Closure: Cork

Description

The guys from Mosel Fine Wines have nailed it! This is superb. When you listen to Andreas speak of the unique cooler climate of the site this all makes sense. Andreas and Barbara have achieved outstanding balance here. The vinosity with 8.5% alcohol is there, not always the case with young Rizza from this neck of the woods. The clean, refreshing acidity plays beautifully with the moderate residual sugar. Lythe with a divine set of flavours it’s fantastic to see this a couple of years on and it will undoubtedly continue to evolve beautifully for many more to come. It’s no surprise A.J.Adam were invited to join the VDP and participate in the auctions!


AP 10.18  The 2017er Dhroner Hofberg Kabinett was harvested at a remarkably moderate 80° Oechsle. It displays a delicately smoky nose of vineyard peach, anise, grapefruit, smoke, herbs and greengage. The wine is finely juicy on the palate and develops a superbly refreshing acidity which gives a lively kick to the very long and light-weighted finish. This lovely and racy Kabinett proves quite easy-drinking today but its great underlying complexity means the real show will only start in a couple of years. 2025-2037

Jean Fisch & David Rayer, Mosel Fine Wines

In stock

Check out all of the wines by A.J.Adam

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

About A.J.Adam

Our winery in its current form has only existed since the 2000 vintage. After our grandparents lacked the family continuity after generations of viticulture, we grandsons have gradually given the winery new splendor and revived the vineyards of the Dhroner Hofberg. Forgotten, but still present was the monopoly site Dhroner Häs’chen. The steep terraces of the Mosel bank pile up powerfully. With the 2014 vintage, the time had come: our portfolio of sites was expanded by one site in sole ownership.

Just south of Piesport in a small side valley lies the steep, south-facing vineyards of Dhron, named for a tributary of the Mosel. The Dhronerthal (Dhron Valley) is a small tributary of the Mosel, running south, just after Piesport. The steep, southwest facing Hofberg was given the top rating in Clotten’s 1868 Vineyard maps. In the 1950s and ‘60s, the wines of Dhron Hofberg were famous, gracing the tables of fine restaurants. In the 1970s and ’80s, the new generation started to leave the vineyards and move to cities – a generation of Moslaners left their birthrights and many famous but small vineyards were left untended and became relics of the past.  Growers in the village abandoned winemaking for work in larger cities, including Andreas’ parents. Adam re-started his family estate while still studying at Geisenheim University and interning at some of the great estates in Germany – Heymann-Löwenstein in the Wininngen, St. Urbans-Hof in Leiwen, and Van Volxem in the Saar.  His first official vintage was in 2000 when he was just 21 years old, working a single hectare that was owned and farmed by his grandfather.

It was an area ripe for revitalization, as Andreas tells it: expanding with vineyard land in the Hofberg was “almost free” he says, paying less than 5 euros per square meter. “The sites were steep and very hard to work, so the land was very inexpensive. There was no demand because everyone had abandoned vineyards and Dhron didn’t have a famous name like Würtzgarten.”  Andreas Adam is almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the Dhroner Hofberg back to its former status as one of the great Grand Crus of the Mosel.

Joined by his younger sister Barbara in 2013, after her graduation from Geisenheim and a stint at Keller in Rheinhessen, the estate has taken its place as one of the very finest estates in the Mosel. The two siblings work side by side and are responsible for vineyards and cellar together. Andreas & Barbara farm 45 separate parcels on the Hofberg, Häs’chen and Goldtröpfchen in Piesport, in a full spectrum of styles from dry to sweet. Recently they acquired vineyards in Häs’chen (.25ha) and additional land in the Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, specifically a site called Laychen. “Lay” is the old word for slate, and “chen” is the diminutive, referring to the small, broken slate soils here. The small new section of 700 square meters in Laychen was planted in 1908 and is completely ungrafted.

In the Vineyard

Andreas says of his philosophy: “I sustain my vineyards by intensive soil work to bring out the essential nutrients up from the primary rock, the natural compost of a vineyard. This completion of the bond between elemental soil and the work of the vintner is another piece in the puzzle of terroir… I think in Germany we see terroir as a unity of grape, climate, soil, and the mentality of the person who works the vineyard. But the essence of that mentality is a knowledge that the geology of his terrain indeed creates the flavors in the grapes which grow there.”

Vineyard area: 5 hectares

Drhoner-Hofberg

The Hofberg is not a classical Mosel wine location but rather a location in the Dhron valley. The south and south-west facing valley parcels are shaped by the last kilometres of the stream “Dhronbach” before entering the Mosel. Cool and fresh winds coming from the nearby Hunsrück determine the climate of these parcels. When the vines have already started to bloom at the parcels closer to the Mosel, nature needs a few more days to reach the colder Hofberg. We’re growing our Riesling and Pinot Noir grapes on grey, rocky slate that’s streaked with ferric oxide. We’re especially fond and proud of our old vines in the Hofberg valley. Our parcels have been spared from land consolidation which allowed us to keep a steep terrace culture with dry walls that enables a good biodiversity of flora and fauna that’s typical for the river landscape.

Dhroner-Häs’chen – Monopole.

Winemaking on a miniature scale but absolutely precious for our location portfolio. The Dhroner Häs’chen, a location that is entirely in our posession, measures only 2,677 qm. The terraces are steep and almost monumentally reaching for the sky. Extreme heat and direct sunlight are unknown to the Häs’chen. Facing east, this location is especially well situated during the growing impact of the climate change. Ungrafted Riesling vines from the 1930s create delicate, aromatic wines that radiate an inner balance. weathered Devonian slate.

 

Piesporter Goldtröpfchen

An amphitheater for Riesling vines. Vines as far as the eye can see, from young to ancient. Most vineyards have been replanted during the land consolidation in the 90s. Just a few old parcels remain untouched and left in their original state. Since 2009, one of those parcels with partly ungrafted vines aged up to 110 years, located above the village Ferres/Piesport, is part of our vineyard portfolio. A streak of woodland above the Piesporter Goldtröpfchen secures the water supply for the vineyards below. The slate differs from the Dhron valley, as it’s more weathered and reaching deeper into the ground. The location is warm, allowing us to grow rosemary, lavender and wallflower on the site. Our wines from Piesport are powerful, wild at youth and often times present themselves with dark fruit.

In the Winery

Harvest is always done by hand, with a heavy selection in the vineyards. The wines are fermented using only ambient yeasts in old fuder (around 1000 liters) and halbfuder (around 500 liters) and stainless steel. The wines are often left in contact with the lees for an extended period of time after natural fermentation, but nothing is done by rote at the estate.

There are no additions of any kind: no cultured yeast, enzymes and no süssreserve.

The 2017 Vintage at A.J.Adam

Although from the 2019 vintage the video below shares some thoughts on 2017, the incredibly low yields it offered and the divine wines made.

Andreas Adam sees 2017 as a vintage which suits his style very well: “The 2017 wines have a lot of finesse, and are quite comparable in style to those of the great 1971 vintage. As all growers, also we suffered losses due to the frost in April. Overall, our yields were contracted by one-third but the Sängerei was hit particularly hard – almost half the crop – it is a warmer parcel and the vegetation was already more advanced. On the other hand, I had almost no loss from frost in my parcels deep into the backside of the Dhroner Hofberg and those in the Dhroner Häs’chen. August was comparatively wet and we saw some early development of botrytis and I decided to immediately discard it. In September, we removed some leaves so that the grapes remained well exposed to air. Thanks to these two measures, we had almost no botrytis in our vineyards throughout the harvest. I have difficulties comparing the 2017 to any recent vintages. Although the 2017-2016-2015 trio is high in acidity, the DNA of these three vintages are quite different: 2016 was cooler and 2015 warmer than 2017.”

The Estate started its harvest as early as September 18 and first brought in the grapes for its basic wines and its Kabinett bottlings. It then took a small break in order to further get rid of some botrytis-affected grapes and remove leaves. The grapes for the village wines then came in and at last all other grapes were selected. The harvest lasted for exactly one month. As acidity levels were high and the stems not fully ripe, the Estate decided not to do any pre-fermentation skin contact. Andreas Adam adds that “the Oechsle levels were similar to those of 2016, i.e. in the Kabinett range. It let the wines longer on their fine lees, and this has helped the acidity levels to drop consequently” (no wine was de-acidified). The wines were bottled at the end of April.

Despite the losses, the Estate produced its regular portfolio right up to two Auslese, one from the Dhroner Hofberg (without botrytis) and one from the Dhroner Häs’chen (with approx. 30% of botrytis). It however added one new wine, called the Dhroner Hofberg von den Terrassen, which comes from the terraces on red slate situated in the central part of the vineyard. In 2017, it also integrated the parcel in the Piesporter Goldtröpfchen previously tended together with Julian Haart into the Estate holdings (and was able to complement it with an adjacent one planted with 100 year-old vines in 2018).

To complete the news front, the Estate decided to return to natural cork closures for some wines, except for its basic wines (namely the dry Riesling and the off-dry “Im Pfarrgarten”, which are still under screwcap), as Andreas Adam finds that his wines age more harmoniously under this type of closure.

2017 is a major success at the A.J. Adam Estate. The wines show great aromatic purity combined with a racy yet playful acidity. But these are no early pleasers, especially the dry wines which will need quite some patience to integrate and develop their inner balance (this is reflected in our drinking windows). The Goldtröpfchen Trocken is a splendid fully dry Riesling, while the new (off-dry) von den Terrassen is also worth looking for and high quality of this wine amply justify the fact that the Estate finally bottled this separately. The fruity-styled collection is beautiful, and here, essentially every single wine is warmly recommended.

Mosel Fine Wines

Where in the World is A.J.Adam?

A.J Adam’s home base is in Neumagen-Dhron on the Dhron river that runs off the Mosel in the horseshoe below Piesport. Here you’ll find their Holfberg vineyards. They also own the monopole Häs’chen and plots in Piesporter.

Click to view the interactive VDP map
Map by Fernando Beteta, MS @fernandobeteta on Twitter

 

92 Points

AP 10.18  The 2017er Dhroner Hofberg Kabinett was harvested at a remarkably moderate 80° Oechsle. It displays a delicately smoky nose of vineyard peach, anise, grapefruit, smoke, herbs and greengage. The wine is finely juicy on the palate and develops a superbly refreshing acidity which gives a lively kick to the very long and light-weighted finish. This lovely and racy Kabinett proves quite easy-drinking today but its great underlying complexity means the real show will only start in a couple of years. 2025-2037

Jean Fisch & David Rayer, Mosel Fine Wines

Where in the world does the magic happen?

Weingut A. J. Adam, Metschert 14, Neumagen-Dhron 54347 Neumagen-Dhron, Germany

Mosel
Mosel-Saar-Ruwer
Germany