Netty remoteAddress from channel is null

Question

The following code is from a piece from a extended class of ChannelInboundHandlerAdapter:

@Override
public void channelInactive(ChannelHandlerContext ctx) throws Exception {
    System.out.println("channel inactive, reconnect to the server.");
    long sleepTimeMs = 1000;

    final EventLoop eventLoop = ctx.channel().eventLoop();
    SocketAddress socketAddress1 = ctx.channel().remoteAddress();
    eventLoop.schedule(() -> {
        try {
            System.out.println("Reconnecting ...");
            tcpClient.connect(ctx.channel().remoteAddress());
        } catch (Throwable e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }, sleepTimeMs, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);

    ctx.fireChannelInactive();
}

Without having

SocketAddress socketAddress1 = ctx.channel().remoteAddress();

the following line would throw a NullPointerException:

tcpClient.connect(ctx.channel().remoteAddress())

as the ctx.channel().remoteAddress() param is null (I tested it multiple times with and without socketAddress1 assignment).

Any explanation of this?