Hermann J. Wiemer Late Harvest Riesling 2020
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Lush tropical aromas announce the ripeness of our Riesling Late Harvest. Sourced from select blocks in our Josef, Magdalena and HJW Vineyards, this structured, balanced Riesling shows a subtle minerality that underscores its pleasing and fruit-dense finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Riesling Late Harvest comes in with 52 grams of residual sugar and 9.6% alcohol. This is a blend of vineyards: mostly Josef (50%) and Magdalena (40%), with a little HJW. The grapes were about 25% botrytis affected. This is, of course, where you get a little past merely "off-dry" in the lineup. It's not sweet enough to be a full-blown dessert wine, but it is obviously sweeter than, say, the Semi-Dry. It's perfect to drink on its own. There's not much of an acidic core, though, and the fruit and sugar are clearly in control. I still liked this a lot. The price is reasonable in the lineup and it will be another wine that is in a crowd-pleasing style. It should hold for another decade, at least, but I doubt that this vintage will be the very best one to age. Best After 2022
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Wine Enthusiast
Sourced from a blend of estate sites, this late-harvest Riesling offers aromas of pithy grapefruit, pineapple and peach on the nose. The rounded palate displays bright tropical and stone fruit flavors matched by lemon and honey. It ends bright, lifted and juicy thank to refreshing acidity.
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Hermann Wiemer was born in Bernkastel, Germany into a family with 300 years experience in making the distinguished vinifera wines of the Mosel Valley. He arrived in the United States in 1968 already well versed in the European tradition of fine winemaking. To this heritage he added the skill of grafting fragile vinifera vines onto sturdy American rootstock.
In 1973 he bought 140 acres on the west side of Seneca Lake, which he planted with a variety of European vinifera grapevines. Visitors who wish to see these vines, along with ponds and the six acre nursery, can take the popular Vineyard Walk through the property.
The Winery, which produces 12,000 cases each year, was designed in 1982 by an award winning team of Cornell architects. Enclosed within the shell of a seventy-year-old scissor-trussed barn, it accommodates a laboratory, tasting and retail sales, a wine production area and a private tasting room. Its unique white cathedral-like interior counterpoints the bare wooden walls and sleek Italian stainless steel tanks.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Increasingly garnering widespread and well-deserved attention, New York ranks third in wine production in the United States (after California and Washington). Divided into six AVAs—the Finger Lakes, Lake Erie, Hudson River, Long Island, Champlain Valley of New York and the Niagara Escarpment, which crosses over into Michigan as well as Ontario, Canada—the state experiences varied climates, but in general summers are warm and humid while winters are very cold and can carry the risk of frost well into the growing season.
The Finger Lakes region has long been responsible for some of the country’s finest Riesling, and is gaining traction with elegant, light-bodied Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc. Experimentation with cold-hardy European varieties is common, and recent years have seen the successful planting of grapes like Grüner Veltliner and Saperavi (from the Eastern European country of Georgia). Long Island, on the other hand, has a more maritime climate influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, and shares some viticultural characteristics with Bordeaux. Accordingly, the best wines here are made from Merlot and Cabernet Franc. The Niagara Escarpment is responsible for excellent ice wines, usually made from the hybrid variety, Vidal.