Hans-Josef Becker, Weingut J. B. Becker Wine Personality of the Year
"Becker's
wines are so confidently independent that they have long been in a
league of their own, where trends are no longer relevant. With an
unyielding commitment to quality and a healthy dose of likeable
stubbornness, Becker has been managing to bottle timelessness for
decades."
HENRIS WeinGuide Germany 2026
The HENRIS WeinGuide
Germany 2026 was released recently by HENRIS, a publishing house based
in Munich. This is the first HENRIS WeinGuide Germany. Until very
recently, the HENRIS publishing house was in charge of the
Gault&Millau Guides for Germany, both for restaurants and wine.
Basically, the HENRIS WineGuide Germany is the old Gault&Millau
WeinGuide Germany with a new name. The team of tasters remained the
same, with Otto Geisel heading the team.
Stephen Bitterolf (Vom Boden) on HaJo Becker
These wines taste like NOTHING else coming out of the Rheingau and Hans-Josef Becker just doesn’t give a ****.
I struggled with a more elegant way of introducing this estate, some
poignant lines contrasting the manicured lawns of the aristocratic
estates with the dirty-fingered, weathered-skin, mess-of-a-tasting-room
aesthetic at J.B. Becker.
Yet Hans-Josef’s (call him “HaJo”) winemaking has less to do with a
condemnation or critique of the noble establishment (even if it deserves
either or both) and more to do with a vision that is so singular and
steadfast that it feels totally irrelevant whether you or I or anyone
thinks Becker’s “aesthetic” is genius or folly. It just is.
The wines have an in-your-face, love-it-or-hate-it sensibility. They
are unfailingly honest. They present a bizarre vocabulary: dried earth
and rocks, herbs, something vaguely subterranean, a savory, briny, smoky
atmosphere that slowly reveals fine layers of bright citrus. For all
this depth and mysteriousness, Becker’s white wines are like Becker
himself: angular, tensile with awkward elbows and muscle and sinew
pulled tightly over a lean frame. They flaunt a rather prominent acidity
that recalls the more nervy wines of the Mosel, Saar and Ruwer, though
there is a weight, a density that speaks of the Rheingau. They seem to
have more to do with great Chablis than with what we often think of as
German Riesling.
The overall effect, one must say, is bewildering and inspiring.
Becker seems to relish the paradox. If there is any grand system here,
it is inscrutable.
Consider, on the one hand, that Becker (and his father before him)
has worked the vineyards organically for many, many years (they have
been certified since 2011). On the other hand, this rather important
fact is mentioned exactly nowhere so far as I can tell. Not on the
labels, not at the estate. HaJo mentioned it to me exactly once, almost
as an aside. The life of the vineyard, at all levels, is profoundly
important to Becker and he thinks about it deeply. He just doesn’t talk
about it much.
Becker is a strong advocate of wild-yeast fermentations. This
practice puts the graying wild-statesman of German winemaking right next
to the young German hipster-growers, as obsessed with natural yeasts as
anything else. On the other hand, since vintage 2003 Becker has bottled
his wine with glass closures, which of course alienates him from this
same population.
Becker prefers to use pressurized tanks for fermentation, relishing a
quick, warm fermentation (a similar method is used at places like J.J.
Prüm, Keller, etc). Then he racks the juice into the traditional barrels
of the Rheingau for at least two years of barrel age before bottling.
In other words: Gun the shit out of it and then slam on the breaks and
wait out all the others.
Even with these very long élevages, Becker seems to release wines
willy-nilly – he keeps older vintages around because, in a way, the
wines demand it. I have had plenty of Kabinett Trockens at well over 20
years of age and they are gossamer and fine and sprightly and profound.
I’m not sure anyone really knows what to make of HaJo. Certainly
there are no easy answers to anything at Becker. So here are the facts.
The estate was founded in 1893 by HaJo’s grandfather, Jean Baptiste
Becker. He was a cooper and began accumulating some vineyards and voila,
he started a winery. J.B. Becker died in 1944 at the age of 73. So the
story goes, he saw a young child drowning in the Rhein River, yet even
at his advanced age he jumped in, saved the child, then had a heart
attack and died. There is a moving letter about the incident in the
tasting room. Suffice it to say HaJo comes from a long line of bad
asses. Becker’s father Josef grew the estate and in the 1930s befriended
a young importer by the name of Frank Schoonmaker. They became good
friends and Becker acted as Schoonmaker’s consultant and consolidator
for some time.
Hajo himself went to Geisenheim in the 1960s and did all that proper
education stuff but as he tells it, his great revelation came in the
cellars of Schloss Eltz in the early 1960s. Schloss Eltz, it should be
said, made some of the greatest wines of the Rheingau from the 1950s
through the 70s. The wines are just epic, if rather unknown these days
because the estate sold its land in the 1980s. In any event, Becker was
studying with the cellar master at Eltz, a gentleman by the name of
Hermann Neuser, in the early 1960s and this is where he first began
tasting dry Rieslings, fresh from the cask in the cellar… before any
süssreserve was added. The wines were a revelation to him and when he
took over the family estate with vintage 1971, he began focusing heavily
on dry Rieslings.
I remember HaJo narrating this to me one time and, with bated breath,
I asked: “Well, what happened when you switched to dry winemaking?”
HaJo, never one for much talking, simply said: “I lost all my
customers.” And then he took another sip of wine.
Now, more than 50 years later, Becker’s glorious wines are finally
getting the attention and the praise they deserve. So far as I can tell
he anticipated the dry wine movement in the Rheingau a few decades
before anyone else. I asked him how all the new-found attention made him
feel. He said, rather quietly and matter-of-factly, “it’s nice.”
Then he took another sip of wine.
With Hajo and Eva Becker in New York in 2017
In 2017, Weingut J.B. Becker was one of the 13 star winemakers of the
Annual Rieslingfeier in New York, organized by Stephen Bitterolf.
Pictures:
Annette Schiller, Eva Becker, Hajo Becker, Stephen Bitterolf, Egon
Müller, Daniel Vollenweider at the Rieslingfeier in New York (2017).
See:
The Annual "Slaughterhouse" Riesling Feast in New York: Rieslingfeier 2017, USA
Tasting at Weingut J.B. Becker in Walluf, Rheingau, with Hajo Becker – Germany-North Tour 2017 by ombiasy WineTours
Picture: Tasting with Hajo Becker, Weingut J.B. Becker in Walluf/ Rheingau
The tasting at Weingut J.B. Becker in Walluf/ Rheingau with
Cult-winemaker was the last visit of a winery on the Germany-North Tour
by ombiasy WineTours 2017. After the tasting, we had lunch at Italian
Restaurant at Weingut von Oetinger (where we ran into Owner/ Winemaker
Achim von Oetinger), before going to the Frankfurt Airport.
Hajo Becker was our host. His wive Eva Becker and his sister Maria Becker welcomed us.
Our tasting took place right on the banks of the Rhine River in the idyllic Weingarten of Weingut J.B. Becker
We started the day with breakfast at Weingut Kruger-Rumpf, where we
stayed over-night. We crossed the Rhine River by ferry in Rüdesheim and
then drove up the Rhine River from Rüdesheim to Walluf.
Pictures: Crossing the Rhine River in Rüdesheim by Ferry
Weingut J.B. Becker
Weingut J.B. Becker is in Walluf in the Rheingau , close to Wiesbaden.
It was founded by Hajo's grandfather Jean Baptist Becker in 1893. Hajo
Becker took over the family estate in 1971, jointly with his sister
Maria Becker.
Hajo Becker is a trained winemaker. He got his formal education at the
Geisenheim university and his practical education at Weingut Schloss
Eltz, were he did an apprenticeship and also worked as a winemaker.
Recently, Hajo Becker married Eva and it is now a trio that is running the Becker operations.
Pictures: Welcome at Weingut J.B.Becker - Hajo, Eva and Maria Becker
Hans-Josef Becker is also one of the best-known wine commission agents in Germany, bidding on behalf of interested buyers.
The vineyard area totals 13 hectares, all in the Walkenberg site. 75%
of the area is planted with Riesling. Pinot Noir and Müller-Thurgau
account for the rest. The wines are traditionally matured in oak
barrels for a very long time. The Riesling wines are bone-dry, and very
long-lived.
Unusually, five to ten ten vintages are typically on the list of Weingut J.B. Becker.
Pictures: Weingut J.B. Becker including Der Wintergarten
Pictures: Tasting with Hajo Becker
The Wines Hajo Poured
2014 Weingut J.B. Becker Blanc de Noir brut nature
2015 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Kabinett trocken
2008 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Kabinett trocken
1994 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Kabinett trocken
2009 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Spätlese trocken
2010 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Spätlese trocken
2010 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Spätlese trocken Alte Reben
2015 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Spätlese trocken
2015 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Spätlese trocken Alte Reben
2007 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Auslese trocken
2012 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Oberberg Riesling Kabinett halbtrocken
2015 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Sonnenberg Riesling Spätlese
1989 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Riesling Auslese
2014 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Spätburgunder Kabinett trocken
2013 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Spätburgunder Spätlese trocken Alte Reben
2012 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Walkenberg Spätburgunder Spätlese trocken
1994 Weingut J.B. Becker Wallufer Rheingau Spätburgunder Kabinett trocken
Bye-bye
Thanks Hajo for a most enjoyable tasting.
Pictures: Bye-bye
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