NEW TASTING REPORT, COOL MUSHROOMS

Andi Spreizter reminded me we’d known each other (and worked together) for twenty years. A pity we can’t get together to celebrate….

Maybe this tasting report will act as a stand-in, because I found it quite a celebratory several days with the wines. Spreitzers have gone from being “definitely one of the better” in the Rheingau, to “watch them climb!” To “now must be counted among the elite.” As often happens, this entailed a steady incremental improving that one really couldn’t see (let alone measure) when you were too close in. But caring growers mature, they learn from trial and error, and they bring an evolving self to the work. It creeps ahead inexorably.

What I assumed would be good, was good. What really delighted me, though, were two old-vines cuvées below the GG level, and in one case far below. A modest little screw capped wine was really mind-blowing, and has to stand among the best wines I’ve yet tasted in its echelon. I hope that will reassure Andi that I still love him, even as I fussed at him for succumbing to the stupid-heavy-pretentious-bottle craze. He pointed out quite reasonably that he was far from alone, which of course is true, but the way back from this madness consists of one individual and conspicuous producer who says “Enough! I’m not feeding this crap any more.”

(One might observe that the VDP, with all its green virtue-signaling, could release its member growers from the clutches of the stupid-heavy-bottles by decreeing as a group that they will cease using them for the GGs, and the hapless consumer will need to find a way other than fatuous visual symbolism to understand the wines are “important.”)

In happier news, we found a clutch of mushrooms, or rather my eagle-eyed spouse did. We’re not sure if they’re chicken-of-the-woods or some variant of lobster mushroom. She spied them under a shady bush among a bunch of dried leaves. They were delicious, and went very well with Spreitzer’s Wisselbrunnen GG.