terry theise estate selections

162 Pages·2002·2.71 MB·English

by  Simone White

terry theise estate selections
Imported by:
Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc.
575 Underhill Boulevard, Suite 216 Syosset, NY 11791
516 677 9300 Fax [phone] www.skurnikwines.com
e-mail [email protected]
The Theise Manifesto
Beauty is more important than impact.
H a r m o ny is more important than intensity.
The whole of any wine must always be more than the sum of
its parts.
D i s t i n c t i n c t iveness is more important than conventional
p r e t t i n e s s .
Soul is more important than any t h i n g , and soul is expressed as
a trinity of fa m i ly, soil and artisanality.
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contents
What Is Left To Say . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ii
Dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iii
Theise Manifesto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v
Let Us Write Your Order For You . . . . . . . . . . . .viii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Portfolio Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
A New Way to Measure Sweetness . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Dry German Wines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Wine Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
2001 Vintage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Earlier Vintages Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
How German Wines Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Label Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
SOMMELIER ALERT! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
NAHE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Dönnhoff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Weingut Hexamer (NEW) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Helmut Mathern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Dr. Hubert Gänz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Kruger-Rumpf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Dr. Crusius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Jakob Schneider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
RHEINHESSEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
Take Me To Your Liter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
J.u.H.A. Strub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
Brüder Dr. Becker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
Günter Wittmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Merz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
P.A. Ohler’sches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
Christian-Wilhelm Bernhard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58
Gernot Gysler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60
MITTELRHEIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
Tasting Versus Drinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
Toni Jost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
v i
Florian Weingart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66
Why Does Place-Specificity Matter . . . . . . . . . . .68
PFALZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
Müller-Catoir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
Koehler-Ruprecht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78
H & R Lingenfelder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81
Kurt Darting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84
Neckerauer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
Weingut Kassner-Simon (NEW) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89
Herbert Messmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91
Josef Biffar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94
Eugen Müller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
Theo Minges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100
POINTS: what’s the point? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102
RHEINGAU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
Josef Leitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
Spreitzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108
Claus Odernheimer / Abteihof St. Nicholas . . . .110
Jakob Riedel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112
MOSEL-SAAR-RUWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114
Mosel Regionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116
Selbach-Oster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118
Selbach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .124
Freiherr von Schleinitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125
Erich Jakoby-Mathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127
A Primer on Terroir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128
Meulenhof/Erben Justen Ehlen . . . . . . . . . . . . .130
Alfred Merkelbach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133
Joh. Jos. Christoffel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136
Heribert Kerpen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140
Willi Schaefer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142
Willi Haag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145
Reuscher-Haart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147
Hoffmann-Simon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149
Carl Loewen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151
Carl Schmitt-Wagner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153
Karlsmühle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155
Van Volxem (NEW) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158
v i i
y visit to Germany last month was unexciting. expectto be moved you’re too self-conscious and you sort
Oh sure, I tasted the best wines of the last 25 years, and of can’t be moved. That was me. My guests had walked
there’s the fact that my wife was charged by a wild boar, if through that little tear in the curtain out into the other
that’s what you mean by excitement. Otherwise, ho hum. world. I was happy for them.
The boar was doing whatever boars do towards Someone asked Herr Schmitt, “Did you make this
evening, in the wild terraces above Müller-Catoir. Karen wine?” “Oh my goodness no, I was just a child,” he
Odessa had wandered out there to sniff the wild plum and answered. Then he grew pensive and said “But I do
almond blossoms. A narrow little trail runs vertically up remember being a boy of six, picking the grapes alongside
the hill between the terraces. K.O. heard a rustling and my grandma,” and then I lost it. I was looking at his hands
turned to see the boar, which seemed to be unaware of her. just then, as it happened, the hands of a vigorous old gen-
So, appallingly, she clapped, to get the beast’s attention. tleman still ruddy from a life in the open air, and I sud-
Yup, she got it! The now-terrified animal saw that its only denly saw the child’s little hands inside them. And saw the
means of escape lay on the very path on which my wife child trotting along at his grandma’s side, happy to be
was standing, so it did what wild included in the general activity, proud to be useful, there
boars do, and ran like hell the among the vines. And now it was sixty-four years later.
only way it could. Yi k e s ! The wine in our glasses was enthralling enough to us, but
Karen O. turned and ran too, to our host it was the pure blood of memory, bound to the
and grabbed whatever scrag- filaments of his earliest joys, with affection and usefulness.
gly branches were at hand in This is a man of Wine, I realized. This is what it meansto
order to lift herself, and managed be a man of wine.
to just get her legs off the ground when This `37 called to us from across a passageway to a
the boar shot between them. world we barely know. But to Bruno Schmitt it called
This having elapsed, she ran back down toward the across each of those sixty-four years from small sweet
buildings – “I didn’t look back, are you kidding?” she said memories. I was so lost in my vision of the boy that I reg-
– to where we all stood in the courtyard calmly yakking istered the 70-year-old face of the man to my left with a
away, unaware of the Mutual Of Omaha Wild Kingdom small shock. He had passed his life in wine, I thought. He
drama which had taken place mere meters away. didn’t choose it because he thought it was gracious or sexy
Needless to say no one believed her. Oh sure, she was or romantic. He chose it (if it was indeed what we sould
scratched and bruised, not to mention terrified, but hey, it call a “choice”) because it needed to be done and it pleased
could have been a hedgehog. “Hedgehogs are capable of him to do it.
considerable ferocity if they feel their young are threat- Wines which come from such people glow with the
ened,” says Marlin Perkins. “Jim here (Marlin’s long-suf- value of human care and enterprise. These vintners don’t
fering factotum) will now attempt to grab one of the little seek to reinvent Wine. It is enough that the beauty of wine
critters just to enrage the female hedgehog! His family will renews, always, that every year threads its way into a
certainlybe glad to know he’s fully covered by Mutual Of great story. It nourishes us to take such wines into our
Omaha for what promises to be a sensational mauling…” bodies, because by doing so we are connected to the delib-
So, as you see, another tranquil year. erate rythyms of the world, and to our human place in it.
Not like two years ago, when I wept in front of eleven These ideas have started to become my sc h t i c k ;
of my customers and tried not to let them see it. We were they’ve crystalized out of my experience over the years into
tasting at Schmitt-Wagner, and Bruno Schmitt had raided something that looks like a contribution I can make. Thus
his compresensive cellar of old vintages. He does it every I write and talk about them. If you actually rea d this cata-
time I visit, and I can never get over the honor he shows log (you have my sympathies) you might imagine I think
me. Though I suspect he gets a big ol’ kick out of it him- about these things a lot, but the truth is I hardly think of
self; the wines come out like baseballs
at a batting cage and he’s always
announcing the vintage before you
have a chance to guess it, he’s so eager
and revved up.
This time he brought out a treas-
ure remarkable even by his standards,
an Auslese from the great 1937 vin-
tage. I had tasted the wine once before
(this is a generous man) and I waited
for what I knew would come. As the
wine was poured the group inhaled
audibly at the color, and I saw many
faces grow meditative as they sniffed
those first mysterious fragrances. But
as always seems to happen, when you
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them at all. I do if I have to, and I have to now. In my daily buying these wines, and to suggest there are meanings
life I think mostly about baseball, sex and guitar solos. So, beyond the assembling of X-number of wines that tasted
when I all-of-a-sudden am blindsided by an incandescent good.
example of everything I think is important about wine, it Oops, meanings. Dirty word. Can’t go there, because
wipes me out. And thus, I sat weeping in front of eleven of what if someone feels inadequate because they don’t feel
my customers and tried not to let them see. these “meanings” as I do. Dear reader, I have no hidden
Charles Simic once defined poetry as “three mis- agenda; you don’t need my permission to approach wine
matched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley” (thanks to as your temperament urges. I have my own subjective lil’
Molly McQuade for the quote). The basic enigma that truth to speak, and I will because that’s how I want to “do
changes the lens business,” and you can ignore it or simply observe it for
by which we whatever it’s worth.
receive the A few tenets of that truth are that a g r i c u l t u r a l
world. The wines are a l w a y sm o re interesting than industrial wines.
more I get into That doggedness in the vineyard and humility in the
wine the less cellar are vital to the making of wines of consequence.
reducible I feel it That wine is a context containing soil-borne flavors –
to be. Its enigma their LANGUAGE – spoken with various ACCENTS
deepens even as a c c o rding to which cellar-work a given grower pre f e r s .
it appears to That removing any PA RT of this context from wine
g row more does injury to its being (and if we do love wine, why
transparent. It is deliberately injure it?) . . .
helpful to see wine connected to gardening, to making It is also a sense of PROPERNESS, that things are
things grow, and it’s even more helpful when the person where they belong. After all the years of trial and error
encouraging the growing is companionably connected to along came Riesling, the vine that belonged in these thin,
the earth; most of all, when he sees the thing through to minerally soils and this cool, long growing season. And
completion. Which, in wine, means to produce and to bot- because Europeans are more aware than we Yanks that
tle it. people actually existed before us, they’re aware of the real
We were all over in Germany at various times last size of their place in the cosmos. They listento the soil and
March. It’s important you know that each of my col- work to do its bidding. They know that the Riesling vine
leagues was with me, did what I did, tasted what I tasted, is the poet of their corner of the earth. They want to hear
and will speak from their own experiences about the the poem. They want us to hear it. And so they work to
wines, even Anthony, who managed to say awake. You bring the words clearlyonto the page. And they are aware
can’t really understand wine – at least not this kind of they do not, themselves, CREATE those words. The text is
wine – if you don’t go there. I remember sitting with created somewhere else, below the ground.
Helmut Dönnhoff trying to glean why his `99s were in One risks unleashing a great fury if one insists that
another league from all the others, and I heard, perhaps soil creates flavor. That fury is worth considering, as I shall
for the first time, a certain urgency about his voice. It isn’t do later in these pages, in a little essay called A PRIMER
at all breathy; he speaks with a kind of closed-throated ON TERROIR. (Miramax is bidding for the movie rights
passion which resonates from his piercing blue eyes. That by offering to sign Ned Beatty to play “loam.”)
precise driven-ness is the “secret” of those wines. If you I live a disphasic existence. The way fine German
haven’t been with him you won’t – can’t – get everything wines are made makes perfect sense to me. Soils and expo-
his wines are saying. Nor can they be entirely seenwith- sures are complex and variable; therefore the wines are
out having walked those vineyards, looked into the soils, kept separate and produced in small lots. The climate is
breathed the air, listened to the local birds. sometimes iffy, so the wines are categorized by how ripe
I am aware of my blessings. I know that many of you the grapes were, since you can’t presume upon ripeness.
can’t have this experience as easily as I do, maybe not at The production structure is artisanal, and there’s a lot of
all. It is why there is sometimes a chasm between the way hands-on by family vintners who literally live above their
I relate to wine and sell it and the ways you relate to wine wines. This means that individual wines come and go;
and buy it. Until recently that chasm was a place I felt they’re different every year. They resist being categorized;
lonely and unseen. But I can’t change it, and it’s self-indul- it is in their essence to be discontinuous. Superficially
gent to feel the pain of that place when there’s so much of they’re a pain in the neck. Yet it is even more distressing
fascination to be found there. I like what you can see when when a vintner tries to rationalize away the innate charac-
no-one can see you! ter of his type of wine. I think vintners should vint, and
None of this is valuable if the wines don’t taste good. marketing people should market and salespeople should
Josh Greene’s interview with me for Wine & Spirits sug- sell. And I think I could, if I really wanted to or had to,
gested that superb quality was a secondary consideration make this all less onerous for accountants, warehouse peo-
for me, but the truth is I barely consider it at all: It’s a ple, data processing people, all the innocent bystanders for
given. There is a “professional” intelligence that seeks to whom I feel great sympathy. I could do it. But only at the
guarantee every wine tastes good every time. But after all price of slaughtering something I feel is even more vital to
these years (17!) I’m drawn to tell you fromwhomyou are protect.
2
That “something” sounds like pretty words until you en t i r e journey was absurd. Now that’s absurd! All that’s hap-
see it yourself and see how natural and plain it is. The pened is we’ve been shown where to stop speculating.
gr owers themselves are seldom aware of their roles as pro- Taking Matt’s idea as a starting point, then, I might
tectors of an ancient verity. They just do what they do. But ask these questions: What is wine trying to tell us about
the net res u l t of what they do, FOR CIVILIZATION, is to the earth? What is it in wine that transmits the message?
pr otect and nurtu r e in d i v i d u a l i t y against a rip tide of uni- Why does the earth want us to hear its message? Why was
fo r mi t y , to protect hu m i l i t y in the face of an arrogance that wine chosen to convey the message? Now I’m not of a par-
pr esumes we have dominion over nature, and to prot e c t ticularly speculative bent myself; I don’t worry about these
hu m a n i t y , the connection of the worker to the work. Their kinds of questions. Yet I presume upon a world in which
wines aren ’ t Things, but rather Be i n g s : the grower knows they are LEGITIMATE questions, and I dothink that wine
them, knows each plot of land, each vi n e in many instances, is a conveyor of meaning. Certainly not all wine, maybe
knows how the grapes looked and tasted when they were not even muchwine, but a few wines, those that express a
picked, knows everything that went into the growing sea- spirit of place and which are uncompromisingly, distinctly,
son, knows how the must behaved before and during fer- themselves. “Made” wines – wines intended as Products,
mentation, and knows in some inchoate way the connection wines fashioned according to commercial formulas, wines
between the land and the wine because he is steeped within made in very large wineries, wines made by technocrats,
the nexus of that connection all the time. He has absorbed wines made without reference to a grape’s natural habitat
it into his basic experience of rea l i t y , it is no longer an and/or without consideration of a sense of place – such
abstract idea he thinks about. It is simply how things are. wines have a kind of half-life; they are without soul. They
“Whoever discovered water, it certainly wasn’t a fish!” might taste good; they often do. They show great. They
In a recent SPECTATOR Matt Kramer wrote a can show the ASS off your palate –but they are ultimate-
pr ovocative column in which he took issue with aesthetes ly utterly meaningless. Wine-like substances. Junk-wine.
who were kvetching that certain ugly buildings from the He r e’ s the crux of it. Something in us craves diversity.
sixties were being considered as architectural monuments. We hunger for it in ways too numerous to cite. Some crea t i v e
Kramer conceded the buildings were eyesores, but that li f e - u r ge seems to be expressed by diversity. It is counter to
wa s n ’ t the point, as he saw it. The buildings, ugly as they the life-force to struggle against it, it is literally deadening to
we r e, REPRESENTED a sensibility which made its mark live in a standardized world. Along with diversity comes
on the history of arch i t e c t u r e, and as artifacts they signified habitat. Diverse members of a specie have diverse pref e r en c e s
something important even if we felt them to be ugly. Then as to where they live and what they eat in order to survive. I
he applied the principle to wine; he claimed that there is a feel strongly that the be s t grapes are those which are fa s t i d i -
value in wine deeper than how much sensual pleasure it ou s in their pref e r ences. They may live, technically, away
gives us. Paraphrasing Matt now, he wrote a wonderfu l fr om their natural homes, but they won’t thrive. They give
sentence to the effect that wine can tell us something about boring wines. The world’s most fascinating, meaningful and
the earth that we can receive no other way, and that this DELICIOUS wines are made from grapes grown wh e r e they
ma t t e r ed more than how “good” it happened to taste. be l o n g , in the soils and climates that suit them. And they are
Superficially it defies a certain logic. It might appear individuals. And they are not common. And they are worth
that wine has no reason to exist except to give pleasure. ev e r ything, just everything; they are why we care at all about
First it has to taste good or why would we drink it? But this crazy way we make a living.
consider this. Grant me for the sake of argument that
Volnay at its best is sublime wine in its perfume and class
but also a wine which can be light in body. Nothing wrong
with that! Also grant me that the Gevrey type at its best
has plenty of body andsatisfying meaty depth, but some-
times seems to yearn for more perfume and class. You
could, if you wanted to, open a bottle of each and MIX
them to create a hypothetically superior Burgundy. Now
you’d have body and perfume. But would you do such a
thing? You would in effect OBLITERATE the Beings of
Volnay and Gevrey in order to create the Thing you seek.
So I would suggest that we derive many pleasures
from wine, some sensual, some cerebral, some even mysti-
cal, and that we are wise to nurture all of them. If we’re
wine freaks, we care about whothe wine is just as we care
about how it tastes.
When you speculate metaphysically you can easily for-
get how or when to stop. You get a tiger by the tail and it
pulls you into an endless sequence of “whys” and “whats”
which eventually become absurd. What happens then is we
usually give up. We reach the point of absurdity and mistak-
enly conclude that because we arrived at an absurd place, the Kerpen Estate
3
CONTINUING NEW APPROACH tr ee? That plus it’s fr ui t l e s s (pun intended!) because it’s ta u -
TO TASTING NOTES to l o g o u s : when you describe flavors in terms of other fla-
vors you eventually hit a wall. “This wine tastes like
“At the moment we see something beautiful, we undergo peaches.” Fair enough. What do peaches taste like???
a radical decentering. Beauty, according to [Simone] Weil, In fact this year, for the first time in my life, I began
requires us ‘to give up our imaginary position as the cen- to find it wearisome to write notes. If the wines were true
ter . . .’ What happens, happens to our bodies. When we (as nearly all of them were) I was reduced to repeating
come upon beautiful things . . . they act like small tears in what I’d written countless times before. I also found the
the surface of the world that pull us through to some 2001s almost frustratingly complex! In effect they were
vaster space . . . or they lift us . . . letting the ground rotate too compellingto be merely “received”; they demanded a
beneath us several inches, so that when we land, we find kind of deliberate intellectual attention to try and glean
we are standing in a different relation to the world than we their facets and design.
were a moment before. It is not that we cease to stand at One also has “good-writer-days” and “lousy-writer-
the center of the world, for we never stood there. It is that days” (I have the latter with distressing frequency); on the
we cease to stand even at the center of our own world. We good days thoughts and images flow and dance. I read
willingly cede ground to the thing that stands before us.” what I’m writing and think “Good; this conveys it,” but
on the bad days it’s just “Oh crap, mustIagainwrite ‘slate
-Elaine Scarry
and apples’ for the umteenth time?”
I want my notes to help you, of course, and I want them
I used to care a great deal about writing tasting notes to convey how the wine spoke. I’d rather not try to grasp or
as much for my own writer’s ego as for the actual wines. I ap p r ehend a wine. It’s a kind of parlor-trick to be able to
searched for ever-more esoteric associations so you would string associations together, like you have a better palate if
be impressed with my palate. I strove for pretty language you “find” twelve things the wine smells like and the next
so you’d think I was a good writer. Sometimes I actually guy only found nine. It’s still all about yo u . If I examine the
wrote well, and sometimes the wine actually did taste like facet of consciousness I use to receive wine, it feels improb -
“polyvinyl siding in direct sunlight on a Fall day with an able and miraculous. I try, at once, to both be lambent and
a p p roaching cold front” (I no longer re p resent t h a t receptive an d to direct a beam of attention and, in truth, I
agency), but mostly I fell victim to my own affect. ha v e n ’ t a clue ho w I do it, nor am I conscious of trying to do
And of course I still do, because words hold me in a it. I only know I summon a kind of calm.
certain sway, and wine acts on my feelings. But I have Then I get to hear the wine, and if it doesn’t speak in
begun to feel that writing tasting notes is sometimes like words then I try to find a way to record whatever lan-
pausing to describe the giddy ecstatic running of a dog to guage it does speak. Image is fine. Some might think it
whom you’ve just thrown a stick. The grinning beast lopes twee, but I’ll happily crawl out on that limb. Feelings of
back to you with some big ol’ drool-covered stick in his textureare fairly easy to describe, and texture is at least as
slobbery maw, and he’slookingat you as if every scintilla important as actual flavor. And associative language can
of his happiness depends on your throwing that stick be useful, especially if it’s a genreof wine we’re describing.
again, and what are you doing? You’re writing! Put down Signature flavors are helpful to know.
the pen and throw the damn stick, man. Those blasted chefs have come up with a damnably cun-
I t ’s an odd business, this tasting and conveying ning zen concept for elusive flavor; um a m i . As best I can cap-
th r ough words. It makes a wine into a precious object of tu r e the concept, umami is an interior flavor you don’t taste as
attention excluding the rest of the world. I have a specific a discrete ta s t e but is deeply present on your terti a r y palate,
me r cantile purpose in telling you how my selections tasted, especially as you exhale. Certain foods (such as mushrooms) are
but it’s been years since I wrote or read tasting notes for ge n e r ous with umami, and certain kinds of preparations (long
fun. Who bloody ca r es if it’s white peach or yellow peach slow braising) encourage it. It’s present in wine also, especially
or peach pit or peach skin or the BARK from the peach in wines whose flavors aren ’ t carried on swift currents of acidi-
ty . Umami has crept into a few of my notes so you should
know what I think I mean by it! It’s the taste of yourself tasting.
I hit a hot streak once in which I bulls-eyed something
like five consecutive old vintages we’d been tasting blind.
It ’ s fun to be good at palate-macho, though I know it’s
mostly a parlor game, plus it involves a lot of luck. But it is
the one time on these trips that I don’t have to assess a wine
in terms of “does it make the cut?” nor am I obliged to
describe it. In other words, I can relax. Win e ’ s a sometimes
shy dog; you gr a s p at it, it runs away. You wait patiently for
it, it’s curiosity gets the best of it, it comes to you. If you’re
anxious (Oh shit, will I get it right?) it reads your fear and
keeps its distance. If you’re simply receptive, th e r e it is, lay-
ing at your feet and smiling. Usually you “get” the wine
with the first impression. Your guess is correct. You get all
the samolians. The others, well, they get an edition of the
“Mosel Wines Of The 60s” board game, plus the bitter
me m o r y of having been bested by some zen galoot.
4
MAKING THE CASE
who simply taste these wines, will like them and be sur-
FOR GERMAN WINES
prised by how muchthey like them. It isn’t the wine per se
One night ret u r ning home to my hotel, I turned off the t h a t ’s “difficult,” but rather the barriers erected in
car and got out, and heard something I hadn’t heard in advance by the drinker.
many years. Three nightingales were singing their dark and
eerily beautiful song. Suddenly the world went silent, and it
was the beginning of time. I walked in the hotel’s garde n
and listened to the three tiny birds until it was too cold to
stay out longer. Inside, I opened my windows – they were
still singing there in the middle of the night – and snuggled
under the comforte r , and let them sing me to sleep.
And now I’m writing about making the case for
German wines. As if they need me to do so; naturemakes
the case for German wines constantly, with every lark,
thrush or nightingale, every snap and crunch of apple,
every swooningly fragrant linden tree in full blossom,
everything that makes us pause when we are visited by the
electric hum of the world. German wine is a small bird
that sings in the darkness, a seemingly minute thing that Weingart Vineyard
can tingle your pores, and haunt you your entire life.
Happily, one barely needs to make the case for “The wines are too sweet.” This is just not true, as
German wines any more. We’re still far from the main- can be demonstrated. I’ve poured bone-dry, I mean dry as
stream (and I’m not sure I’d want to be there in any case) dust Trocken wines for tasters who complained at their
but I’m sure you’ve noticed these wines are MAKING sweetness because they had seen the shape of the bottle
THE SCENE in their cool Hugo Boss duds. I am some- and the words on the label and their brains were flashing
times asked why; I think there’s a few reasons: 1) Who the SWEETNESS UP AHEAD sign. The very same wine,
knows! I mean, do youknow, does anyoneknow? Maybe decanted into a burgundy bottle and served alongside, met
it was just Time. 2) Many drinkers are suffering debilitat- with approval. “Ah that’s better: nice and dry.”
ing attacks of Chard-ennui and are seeking wines that What people think they taste and what they actually
taste more real and complex. 3) Best for last. A whole new taste are sometimes divergent. What they say they like and
generation of sommeliers has arisen, worshipping no false what they actually like are often divergent! Nothing new
gods, interested only in how wines work with food, more here. Apart from which, it’s really tedious to be on the
willing to gamble on their passion and experience than defensive regarding sweetness. Somebody please tell me
were their snooty, ossified forbears. what’s supposed to be WRONG with sweetness? When
Thus if I repeat this text it’s not to convince you; did it become infra-dig? We SNARF down sweetness in
you’re very likely smarter about these things than Iam. It’s every other form, why not in wine? It’s in mostof the food
to give you some ammo with which to convince others. we eat. What do you think would happen if we turned the
The few holdouts, the recalcitrant, the disparately stub- tables; put themon the defensive for rejectingsweetness?!
born, clinging for dear life to those old shopworn faiths, “Who told you it wasn’t cool to drink wines with sweet-
we gotta try to redeemthese poor souls. ness?’ we could ask. “Man, that idea went out with dou-
German wine is not what most people think it is, ble-knit leisure suits.”
because Riesling is not what most people think it is. I once “The wines don’t work with food.” NOT!
told a woman at a tasting, when she asked if I had any “The wines are impossible to understand.” The
C h a rdonnays, that a l l my wines were Chard o n n a y s . worldis impossible to understand, using that logic. Look,
“Then give me your best one,” she asked, and I think I German riesling is absolutely simple in its essence. Late-
poured her a Lingenfelder. “Oh this is wonderful!” she ripening variety with naturally high acidity grown in the
enthused. “I think this is the best Chardonnay I’ve ever most northerly latitude possible. Long hang-time. Lots of
tasted.” That’s because it comes from the town of RIES- opportunity to leach minerals from the geologically com-
LING, I said, showing her the word on Rainer’s label. If plex sub-soils. Roots have to sink to find water, and roots
you want really good Chardonnay, I continued, make sure are able to sink because topsoils are poor. Topsoils are
it comes from Riesling. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve poor because most riesling is planted on mountainsides, to
really taught me something.” Little did she know. increase its chance to ripen, and rich soil would avalanche
The paradigm for German wine is pure fruit flavors, every time it rained. So the wines are fresh, vibrant and
faithfulness to the soil, and balance of all structural com- minerally. There. Now you know everythingyou needto
ponents so that neither sweetness nor acidity stands out. know to “understand” German wine. The rest is fine-tun-
Most modern well-made German Rieslings with residual ing. They are maybe complicated but hardly abstruse.
sugar tastes DRIER than most new-world Chardonnay. There’s some stuff to memorize, like there is everywhere
And in place of the wash of slutty oak you get specifically else. If you care, you learn it.
focused flavors that can be hauntingly complex. People “There’s too many different wines.” This istrue, but
5
it’s inextricable from the jewel of the German wine expe- just not quite sweet enough. We drank the rest of the bot-
rience, just as it is in Burgundy. Comte Lafon couldequal- tle with cheese. Savvy sommelieres have discovered this
ize the casks and produce one white wine and one red wicked little secret: riesling with acidity and residual sugar
wine, as he might were he a Bordelais. It would definitely is the perfect wine for many cheeses.
simplify things. Would you want him to? Would the gain But I am falling into the trap of defending Auslese’s
in simplicity outweigh the loss of fascination? You tell me! utility. Let’s just finish the job while we’re at it. Many
Of all the grapes—not just white grapes, but all gr a p e s Ausleses are not at alltoo sweet for the multi-culti eclecti-
fr om which wine is made—the Riesling is the most innate- cism we see on plates all over white-tablecloth land, even
ly fine and noble. If it’s grown in its habitat it can give wines in your home town. Have you tried them? So many
of incomparable vividness and complexity all by itself, with- “savory” courses are quite sweet these days, and a stern,
out having to be tweaked or twiddled or eeked or diddled. manly Auslese will march in synch. Let’s not even go to
As such I think Riesling, or indeed any wine with these foie gras.
kinds of virtues (Loire Chenins come to mind), can give the Next, it’s not at all difficult to craft dishes for
“discriminating” palate its greatest pleasure. I wince at the Auslesen without distorting your usual aesthetic. Norman
pompous phrase, yet it is one of Riesling’s great wonders. Van Aiken’s menu, to name but one leading chef, is pre-
Wine-beginners who happen onto Riesling discover its mira- destined for precisely this type of wine. Make a sweet-salty
cle, to be at once entirely accessible and endlessly complex. salad without too much sharpness and that Auslese you’ve
It was once said the beginner would eventually leave Riesling been eyeing for years will realize its destiny.
behind in search of something more challenging (and that Are the wines too dry for desserts? Usually, yes. ‘Till
he’d ret u r n to Riesling later on when he realized that no t h - now I’ve confined this tirade to the questions of Auslese’s
in g was really any more challenging!), but I wonder if the 20- usefulness. But now I want to ask: WHO CARES?? Does
and-30-somethings I see drinking these wines will ever find wine really have to prove its utility? Can we accept a
them palling. It doesn’t look that way. What German wine world in which it suffices to be (merely!) beautiful? I drink
teaches us is it isn’t the EXTENT of the flavor that tells, but Auslesen whenever I want to. Sometimes I make food that
its qu a l i t y . We’ve all had numerous bi g wines which were will “work” with them, sometimes not. Often nothing
dull and crude, and we’ve all had relatively little wines which matters but the wine, and great Auslese compels my atten-
simply tasted lovely. But there’ s confusion over this issue, and tion, gratefulness and joy. We don’t have to fuss over the
it won’t hurt to repeat a couple of first principles. Bigger isn’t strict “use” of this or any wine. Perhaps its “use” is to
better in this view of the world: be t t e r is better. And the remind us we live in a world streaming with loveliness.
tr a n s p a r ency of flavor of fine German wine allows you to And if we pause and appreciate, we contribute to that
consider its struc t u r e and enjoy its nuances, and teaches loveliness. That’s all the “use” I require.
you that nuance and struc t u r e are important. Train your
palate this way and you’ll be a better taster, period, as
well as a more informed voter and a finer human being. MAKING THE WRONG CASE
FOR GERMAN WINES
The German Wine Institute, a generic marketing
MAKING THE CASE FOR AUSLESE
organization, has decreed German wine has no chance in
The entire 2001 vintage makes the case for Auslese! export markets unless it is dry. This is an arguable propo-
How strange that one never hears a wine-lover say “I sition if one sees German wine in sum, of which Riesing is
just don’t get Vendage Tardive. Why even bother produc- less than 25% and great Riesling perhaps 25% of that
ing such a thing? How does one use it?” A restaurant I 25%. That said, the idea runs counter to an intuitive truth
really like – Luther, in Freinsheim in the Pfalz – ran an that one leads with one’s best suit. If the great Rieslings are
appetizer of mache with little strips of venison and a the tip of the quality pyramid, as is generally agreed, then
pumpkin chutney. We ordered a Dönnhoff `89 Oberhäuser theyshould establish the “market” and let the rest coast in
Brücke Riesling Auslese for the dish. It was nearly perfect; their slipstream.
But Germany can show a perverse knack for utter
wrongheadedness disguised by plausible logic. I don’t
believe dry German Rieslings are successful often enough
to make them a point on which anyone should focus
(including their creators). A few of them beat the odds,
and we enjoy them and sell them, but we simply do not
NEED Germany to supply us with iffy dry wines (we’re
swimming in dry wines as it is) when she has something so
precious and incomparable to give us with her “sweet”
wines. The logic seems so overwhelming I am truly aston-
ished to find another point of view! Perhaps the explana-
tion is that marketing people are ipso facto deranged.
Terry Theise and Helmut Dönnhoff
6