Weingut Müller Catoir
2022
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the arrival of Martin Franzen as cellarmaster at this venerable estate. That’s an entire generation of drinkers, writers and customers who’ve only known the estate under Franzen’s careful guidance.
There is, let’s say, a celebrated history here, but I don’t think we ought to write about it any more. It muddies the waters and obscures the purity of the modern narrative. Yet it isn’t as if the new broom swept entirely clean. The tradition of not only cultivating but also cherishing varieties such as Scheurebe, Muskateller and Rieslaner has been carried forward, thankfully. Nor does this conflict with Franzen’s central focus on Riesling – and recently, Spätburgunder. It simply adds complexity to the portrait.
The Pfalz is a place of cheery commotion these days, especially in the “classic” corridor consisting of the triumvirate of Deidesheim, Forst and Wachenheim. The first of these is home to Bassermann-Jordan, Von Buhl and to those impassioned radicals at Von Winning, who have upended every existing notion of what German Riesling could be. Forst in turn is home to several excellent small growers, while Wachenheim offers up both Loosen’s J.L Wolf estate, and of course the resurgent youthful team at Bürklin-Wolf. These aren’t the only top estates in the region, of course; there’s Knipser and Rebholz among others.
And then there’s Müller-Catoir, rather off the main drag, up the hill below the villa, cultivating an air of remove that can suggest the monastic, and certainly indicates the introverted. Proprietor Phillip David Catoir will demur, and he’s certainly doing more outreach than did his forbears. But perhaps he’ll forgive my observing that among the most important producers in the Pfalz, Müller-Catoir is the least in-the-mainstream. And this is also true of the wines, stylistically.
Martin Franzen’s wines are diligently explicit but not overtly so. The Rieslings especially are interior wines, and as such they stand out in the Pfalz, a place of sometimes-bellowing extroverts. When Martin arrived, the standard rap was his wines were “like Mosel wines,” since he hails from a Mosel family. This truism was specious and inaccurate, (not to mention Mosel wines have all the affect in the world) but it seemed to stick as a dismissive shorthand. Among the society of significant reviewers, only Schildknecht and Pigott seemed to see the wines clearly.
Another critical error was to judge the estate exclusively from its Rieslings. As diffident as these might (plausibly) appear, Franzen carried on the work of his predecessor in making one of the few greatest dry Muscats in Europe, and certainly in continuing to set the standard for Scheurebe. And then we have the Rieslaner to contend with, and if you’re thinking “But these are ancillary grapes,” well shame on you. To understand Müller-Catoir you have to engage with its entirety, and these Muscats and Scheurebes and Rieslaners are – I don’t hesitate to claim it – great wines. Their quality is not exceeded by anyone else making wines from those grapes. If the wines are relatively extravagant they are by no means radical. They are classics.
But what of the Rieslings, after all? A few years ago Franzen began to want to “open” them up, to render them more animate and more approachable in their early youth. This was discernible in the warm vintages 17-18-19 but less so in 20-21 – but what does it matter in any case? Franzen, who is gregarious and unpretentious, seems to enjoy an ethereal streak where his wines are concerned. Yet even that is facile. He really wants to refine the wines are far as is sensually possible, and in so doing he touches upon the ethereal incidentally. Yet even when the wines are as expressive as the human mind can ascertain, they have a piping, fluting chirrup of melody that you may not appreciate if you need your shoulders shaken.
Recently the estate has entered the fray with Pinot Noir. But being Müller-Catoir, they’ve done so in such a way as to suggest a new language for that variety to speak.
2020 Haardt Spätburgunder +
This is the village-wine from Haardt, which is officially a suburb of Neustadt. You’ll have heard of its prominent sites Bürgergarten, Herrenletten and Herzog.
We have a limpid cherry color but no dearth of ripeness (13.5%) and I doubt that Franzen chaptalized it. Given his general wish to micro-pixilate flavors, the precision of the PN fruit aromas won’t shock you. Nor will the lack (if “lack” it is) of opulence or flirtatious elements.
Yet the palate will surprise you with its silken sensuality and with a fruit-sweetness that’s nearly adorable. An open texture suggests the use of barrels – I’d guess large ones (1,000 liters) and I’d also guess they are used but not old. The diligent clarity is almost caricaturized from the Jancis glass, from which a mintyness and smoke arise, feinting toward Blaufränkisch. (It’s said that mature Blaufränkisch starts to resemble Pinot Noir, so this isn’t as far fetched as it may seem.)
The wine is sophisticated but not aloof; it’s both impressive and enticing, a kind of elemental PN, full of complexity. At the end there’s a salty, almost limestony grip guided by a jot of crushed stones and tannin and even dried flowers. I’m sitting here not quite able to believe, or even to understand, how good this is.
Tasting it for the third time, and using the Spiegelau “red wine” stem, which tends to emphasize umami and mid-palate. But like all these wines, this one is relatively inert over the days, which I don’t mind at all. If anything it seems more silken and floral, but I may be reading that in. You know how wild lavender is a curious overlap of the floral and the feral? This lovely wine straddles the line between spicy (fennel and caraway and anise seeds) and flowery (veering toward the pungent, like day lilies).
I never tasted anything like this. Given that anyone who makes Pinot Noir has Burgundy as a paradigm or lodestar, even people who protest they’re “not trying to make Burgundy,” this tastes like it was made by someone who never tasted Burgundy and doesn’t even know it exists. It is a beautifully weird PN, painted upon a blank canvas, referring to nothing but itself, and speaking a beautiful language of make-believe.
2020 Mussbach Spätburgunder +
Another village-level wine, a little less ripe than the above (13%); the color is darker and the wine smells bloodier, and more (I hate to say it) “Burgundian.” It’s expressive and clearly delicious, juicy and redolent of cêpes and summer truffle.
This is a language we know. The wine is less studious, more roasted, more hospitable and warm and enveloping. Oak is also more overt, which makes the wine a little facile, but it’s senseless to resist its seductiveness, albeit it swims in the mainstream with lots of other German PNs. It’s an upstanding citizen of that world, mind you, but it’s also popular and gregarious.
And that said, in turn, it is also silken and detailed, markedly so given its creamy texture. Curiously, as it sits in the glass it gets stonier and more peppery, encouragingly. I suspect this will surprise me when I taste it again tomorrow.
Well, it does and it doesn’t. It remains disarmingly delicious, yet it continues showing a host of suggestive subtexts. Oak is prominent but neither unbalanced nor gaudy.
2020 Neustadt “V” Spätburgunder +
Still officially a village-wine, but the taller bottle (and the enigmatic “V”) suggest we’re stretching higher now. Speaking of which, the letter that looks like a “B” in the Fraktur is actually a “V” and it stands for Vogelsang, the cadaster holding Catoir obtained, is developing, and which will eventually be a “GG” when the vines reach the necessary age. The soil is fossil-bearing limestone (“Muschelkalk”).
Fragrances are more adamant, darker, rockier – and woodier.
The palate is Very-Serious-Business. If you took the limestony bite from red Burgundy and took away every trace of animality or earthiness or even spices, you might arrive here, at a kind of primordial Pinot, as if the grapes were picked by well trained dinosaurs.
It has more of the stuff we all pay more money for, but I wonder whether it’s actually “better.” It depends on the degree you’re willing to pony up for intensity, and most of us would find there’s more to this in every way. There is saliently more tangible structure, some of which has to do with oak tannin, but a lot of nuances ride along that spine of grip.
I drank a bottle of 2013 Clos Saint Denis from Stephane Magnien last night – lucky me! (We had some pintades and a Burgundy truffle thanks to a sale at D’Artagnan….) For all the profundity of the Burgundy, it was something you wished to absorb into your body, whereas this wine, delicious as it is, is something you wish to engage with your mind. It’s like someone reading a complicated poem and suddenly the obscure syntax makes sense and you get it.
I can imagine someone saying it’s too woody, or that it’s more Tempranillo than PN, or any number of things we might glean because the wine is so explicit, like tweezer-food in a glass.
2020 Herzog Spätburgunder
Now the single vineyard (Erste Lage in the parlance) and ostensibly the top of the quartet. The color, though, is happily limpid – I like PN like that.
I thought we might be dealing with cask once more, and we are. It’s neither crude nor blatant, but I’m always a wee bit distressed when a vintner thinks this is the dialect that “must” be spoken to indicate your wine is Serious. Yet within its idiom, it’s a successful and tasty wine, and that in turn is because Martin Franzen doesn’t seem to know how to make a wine that isn’t transparent and articulate. I mean, it’s a luxury for me to focus on my dismay, considering the many ways this wine might have been vulgar and sloppy.
Among this impressive quartet, this is the least upfront of them. The flavors of the other three come down from above; this comes up from below. It seems to be hiding its cards. It’s a little more fleeting on the finish. It’s the saltiest among them.
All the wines are smart and lovely, and I judge them more or less as equals. Yet the one I like the most is the first one, the original, the uncanny, the sui generis. Fine, right? I like the waifs. Here again, we get more juju with oxygen, more counterpoint to the woody sweetness, and we have a more deftly poised wine overall than, for example, the Mussbach. It is churlish of me to observe the wine is perhaps too plausible, but for now, I’ve seen this show before.
2021 Spätburgunder Rosé
This joins the superb Rosé from Caroline Diel as a high water mark for class in this category, though Diel’s wine is richer and this one is more filigree. One would expect Franzen to limn the outer limits of diction in his pink wine, and so he does.
It’s the Rosé you imagine they drank at the court of Versailles, as they made their arch remarks and remembered to extend their pinkies. That doesn’t mean it’s effete; it means it’s refined, and this is a word seldom deployed to describe a rosé. The wine is admirable and courteous in every way. It takes off its shoes when it walks in your door. It’s full of fruit but isn’t “fruity.”
It is exactly the sort of careful, fastidious wine you’d expect the estate to produce, and I give it my full respect. Here was a case where they might easily have pandered, but didn’t.
SEKT, Riesling, Brut, N.V.
Well this smells good!
30 months on the lees, and from the look of the cork it was probably disgorged about a year ago. It’s as fine as one would expect, with an appealing aroma (lemon balm, and something linking white nectarine with heirloom apples) and yet, while nothing this winery offers is ever careless, this could be even further refined.
Do they keep it for a while post-disgorgement? Have they considered a lower dosage? I’m curious to see where this goes when I taste it again in a couple days, because as it sits in the glass its mid-palate richness arises, and the wine could make a fool of me.
As it happened, it didn’t. There’s an awkwardness here that’s at odds with the prevailing dialect at this address.
RIESLINGS, UP THE LADDER:
2021 M-C Riesling glug-glug-glug
Trocken goes without saying. Damnably. I had a bespoke feinherb bottling of this that barely surmounted the crucial price-point for by-the-glass – with today’s Dollar it would be comfortably below it – and thus it was discontinued after my “retirement.” Pity, because it was as singular and perfect a Riesling as you could ever taste.
<sigh….> I tried.
Still, I always liked the original dry version, and now I like it again. I mean, really like it. It’s more fun than all the Mel Brooks movies put together. It is the purest expression of the riotous herbal and citric notes of ’21 and yet for all its zing, it’s also limpid and at-ease, and almost casually delicious, like it came naturally, like it was no effort in the least to just blast this perfection out to all of us. It’s the kind of wine you taste and think Why would anyone drink anything but this?
When ’21 is good it offers a totally unlikely conciliation of zip and flow, tension and calm. Now in its first year it’s not just drinky, it’s stupid-drinky, and I see no reason not to dive into these wines right now, and roll around the floor together giggling.
I’m leaning toward saying that the ’21s warrant young drinking. What???? All that acidity, and you don’t want to keep them? Well I really do wonder, and part of why I wonder is that four days in, this giddy beast is starting to nip with puppy teeth, and what I think’s happening is, a sharpness was huddling beneath a quilt of irresistible baby-fruit, and as that facet retreats the “expressive” acids start “expressing,” and what transpires in four days in the bottle is often a harbinger of what’ll occur with several years in the cellar. Thus my sacrilege. If you drink them young, you’ll enjoy the giddiest possible primary fruit, and if you wait you will squander that gift on a riskthat the wines will develop according to an Idea you cherish – but it’s only that: An idea.
2021 Haardt Riesling
Trocken of course. Same alc as the M-C, interestingly. We have some attitude now. More demanding, less appealing, but we have to get serious some time. And here we’re introduced to an umami of the fields – if that doesn’t sound too precious. I mean sun-heated grass and herbs, cut hay, weedy greens. Even a small voice of gooseberry peeps up.
You choose. You won’t find anything more than hints of apples or stone fruits here, but you’ll find flavors you’ll like especially if you like high-toned Grüner Veltliners. I like it, up to the slightly astringent finish, yet I also appreciate that this winery offers the opportunity to cavil in tiny ways, because everything is smart and snappy and wickedly articulate. My recoil (such as it is) from the sardonic bite on the finish could be something another taster relishes. It’s a privilege to be persnickety when all the wines are this good. And saying that – this isn’t my favorite.
2021 Neustadt “V” Riesling ++
Tall bottle, alc 13%, Trocken naturally. An overt aroma reminding me of the old clone-90 fragrance – mandarins and pink grapefruit and tilting toward Scheurebe. But oh; this palate……
The reputation of 2021 will be made from wines like this. The question is to what degree these qualities are perishable, and this I do not know. But I can tell you that what’s in my glass right now is bloody superb. It’s still a little “wild,” and it has less fruit than it has spices and savories and almost a Nahe accent. Acidity could be seen as pointed until it’s buffered by a ludicrous saltiness. And for a winery as cerebral as this one can seem, this wine is awfully sexy, especially right from the freshly open bottle.
2021 Bürgergarten Riesling +
This isn’t the “GG” but rather the Erste Lage (1er Cru) single site wine, Trocken, alc 13%. It shows the classic fragrance from the site, mandarins, bergamot, sautéed apple sprinkled with cinnamon – those kinds of things. Especially silky and refined in ’21.
It’s the melody the Mussbach played on an alto-sax, now played on a soprano sax – even the same notes in the same register, just more piping now. We have a lemony citricity, but early-season Meyer lemons, before they grow too rich. And the wine is generally more reticent – yet I wonder what’s being held in reserve? Sometimes wines like this one can seem refined beyond all sensual existence, though I haven’t had the chance to review them when they’re 5-10 years old.
Again, it’s ludicrous to quibble when faced with such beauty. Much of what I love about Dönnhoff’s Leistenberg wines is evident here. I’m looking for the comfort that lives beneath the thrill. But perhaps my quest for consolation is misdirected. What grows clear is, this remarkable family of wines -22 of them in all – will speak differently as they are sampled differently, and I’ll spend the next 7-10 days twisting the sequences to catch myself up in errors I ought not to have made.
2021 Bürgergarten “Im Breumel” GG ++
Pretentious heavy bottle – as always especially egregious when a certified organic estate uses it. And – the word “Riesling” only occurs in teensy print on the side label.
The first time I had a Riesling from this then-new acquisition was back in 2002, when the only way to distinguish it was the AP # 2134. I sometimes wonder whether this estate would have greater “status” if they had five “GGs” instead of just this one.
It’s a clos in the heart of the Bürgergarten, yet as the years have gone by – and now especially – it distances itself ever more from the “parent” site. In effect it has none of the ingratiating elements of Bürgergarten, replacing them with an ancient-tasting kind of solidity, and what one might call a rectitude of minerality. There’s also a high-cheekboned chiseled sort of deacon-reserve here, a Shaker probity. It entails no small courage – or else just sang froid – to present your “GG” without it trying to “impress” the tasters who do their rankings early on.
Perhaps Franzen, for all his geniality, has a mystic streak where his wines are concerned, and if I might paraphrase him, if the ethereal is effective, the earthbound will follow. Not to mention, ’21 is hardly a come-hither sort of vintage. And really not to mention, it’s fairly straightforward finding paths among the fruits and flowers, but it’s another matter to pick ones way among the stones. And Breumel, bless its stringent heart, is a warren of stones. And ginger. And celeriac.
I’m tasting it for the fourth time, and have been consistently impressed. Yet it didn’t “show” well one evening when we drank a flight of the dry Rieslings in the kitchen while dinner was cooking. I was actually baffled, because I’d assumed the stature of this wine would prevail under any circumstances. It doesn’t change my opinion of the wine, but it does affect my feelings about it. Our pedagogical friend seems happiest when being carefully attended to.
Well I’m willing. Will there be a quiz?
2021 Mussbach Riesling Kabinett +
It’s good that the estate still bottles a Kabinett and a Spätlese each vintage, for the clientele who prefer them or who simply have flexible taste. At times I have thought these wines over-sweet, but that could be because the dry wines, the many dry wines, are so dry that an ordinary sweetness seems blatant.
This is colder than my other samples – the cellar isn’t quite cold enough (in mid-November….alas) to leave everything out of the fridge - and this hasn’t warmed up enough. But: It’s a sterling example of the genre, and it isn’t too sweet, and it smells gorgeous, and if it is a little too rich, that can be blamed on climate change. It’s an apple tart in a glass, both the baked fruit and the buttery puff-pastry crust – and it ends day-1 of tasting with a fine send-off.
2021 Mandelgarten Riesling Spätlese
Another heavy bottle. There are too many of these.
And an Erste Lage, a sandy vineyard giving Rieslings at their least “fruity” and most…one could say wild, almost feral. And what can sometimes feel too austere in a dry form can really sing when sweet. As it does here. I wouldn’t have minded a bit less sweetness, but how much would that have taken from the riotously vivid aromas? (Nor is the residual sugar high at all, at least on paper.)
It’s all too easy to second guess the mind of the cellarmaster, tasting the bottled wine in my kitchen almost a year later. I’m sure the ’21 acids felt like a warning – don’t spare the horses. Acid will swallow sweetness. People who buy these wines sometimes want to wait many years to drink them, and a paucity of sugar will tire them too soon. But the more I drank this, the better balanced it seemed.
We have a zingy sort of Spätlese without the usual citrics or malics or stone fruits but with something resembling shrub made from every herb in your meadow.
2021 Herrenletten Weissburgunder
I’m happy they sent this. In the interests of time, when I used to visit on buying trips, I often bypassed the Pinots (Blanc & Gris) just to make time for everything else. So, this Erste Lage wine is something new to me.
Many German estates offer Pinot Blanc to provide a dry wine that’s both lower in acidity and more neutral than Riesling, and these are hugely successful there. So what will Mr. Franzen make of this variety, our hero of the N-th degree of specificity?
In fact I like the wine quite well. It has the approachability of PB alongside the detail of M-C wines. It’s not the way I happen to like to drink Pinot Blanc, but that’s just my subjective preference. This is explicitly, emphatically varietal – if I were teaching varieties to students I’d use this to demonstrate “Pinot Blanc” (before anything was done to it), and it’s certainly pleasurable to drink. Maybe more than just pleasurable. I need to get out of my own way sometimes….
2021 Herzog Weissburgunder
As the above, this is another Erste Lage. It has a different structure, more tensile, more filaments and twigs and spices. It made me think of the Boxler PB from the Brand, perhaps the best in Alsace.
A curious wine. The things I like I really like; the minerality, the tension, the embedded richness, even the slightly-too-much treble. What perplexes me is the brevity, in the face of all that energy. It sings a clamorous song, and is exhausted. But not before it flings a phenolic bite at you as it’s taking leave. In the Jancis glass it asserts a Riesling-like stoniness, which at first is quite impressive, until it crashes into incoherence. You won’t notice this if you drink it with food.
However! I did not taste the two PB together, but rather one per day. I’ll retaste them as a duo and see what can be gleaned.
This I did two times, and each time I liked them even more. I used my “rounder” Spiegelau white-wine stem and found the wines singing.
2021 M-C Muskateller +
I want to do my first run-through in two flights, so 12 wines per day – more than my usual tempo. This came near the end of day-1, as a reward for my enterprise (!). That’s because Catoir Muscat has been a totem-wine for me for the last thirty years. I think it is among the Great Wines of the world, not because it is exalted but because its very lack of (what we’d call) profundity is itself profound.
I wonder if Martin, tasting these wines over all the 20 vintages he has stewarded, ever thinks “Who could ever have imagined I’d be so good with this variety??” I have never quite found a Muscat equivalent to these wonders from Müller-Catoir. The Goldert from Zind-Humbrecht is the north-star for the variety, yet I doubt even that wine can approach this one in detail, psychedelic brilliance, and improbable varietal nuance. This is simply one of the very greatest not-great wines in the world!
2021 Haardt Muskateller ++
To clarify (if needed) the so-called “Muskateller” is in fact the Gelber Muskateller, the yellow-Muscat or small-berried Muscat or, to reduce it to its essence, the effing difficult Muscat. My friends and I call it “the good one,” or would, if I had any friends who shared my ridiculous crush on this variety.
In effect this is the “GG” of Muscat, wherein its assertive varietality is (to some degree) subsumed into a general vinosity that has a boggling quality for the unwary taster. Here I must wonder….has any vintage of ZH Goldert been better than this? I love that wine, buy it whenever I can find it, order it in restaurants even if it doesn’t go with my food, yet this is at least its equal.
Why? Iron, volcanic (black) salts, Thai basil, not to mention a virtually incomprehensible complexity of herbs – plus wild lavender – not to mention a subtle but discernible minerality, all leading to a cogently great example of this admittedly emphatic variety, which has never been nobler than it is here. The final mystery is the fragrance of peach in the empty glass, which let’s face it is completely batshit crazy.
I cannot fathom the poverty of my world if it didn’t contain wines like these.
2021 M-C Scheurebe +
A high-tones neon buzz of Scheu aromas, especially sage, savory and pineapple. It smells like it wants you to faint into it.
This is ridiculously good quality for a wine of this modesty. It’s deft, amazingly complex, both expressive and courteous, crazily herbal and citric and even mineral. Yes the finish is a little shrill – ’21 is not without its claws – but its discretion in the face of its absurd animation is almost without compare, as if the wine insists “Don’t mind me….” while it scatters the craziest most intricate flavors in its wake.
2021 Haardt Scheurebe ++
Village-quality now.
Look, it’s well known that I love Scheurebe; I loved it at first sip, at a long since vanished winery in Wachenheim back in 1978. Because I adore it, I don’t mind when it’s emphatic. It shows, at such times, a sort of noble profanity. A dally in the profane is good for a person, I think, and so I indulge both myself and the wines.
Sometimes, though, a Scheurebe can also show a delicacy and considerateness that seems to have no equivalent. You’d look to Sauvignon Blanc, and I often like Sauvignon Blanc (and sometimes love it) but SB speaks a wild kind of tongue, while Scheurebe will sometimes recite in a Riesling timbre.
I started to write “like this one…” but drew up, because this actually feints toward Grüner Veltliner in its slimmer more herbal dialects. (An aside: There are hack growers in Austria who’ve been known to deploy an enzyme that makes their GV taste like Scheurebe, and so the sorry circle is complete.) In any case 2021 is kind to Scheurebe, giving it a dialectic and discretion it doesn’t always show, while preserving its ornery varietality and also encouraging a refined tenderness that does make a guy think of Riesling. Only the acid bite of so many ‘21s obtrudes upon the eerie and tender affection of this almost-great beauty.
2021 Haardt Sauvignon Blanc
Apropos of which…..
It’s one of the very few times I’ve thought this winery took a false step. SB is trendy, and while I wouldn’t ever accuse them of pandering, they do not need SB when they already make the world’s best Scheurebe. Or?
Bearing in mind, again, that ’21 seems to have been hostile to SB in Germany, this aroma is really uncouth on the heels of those lovely Scheus. The palate is excessively vegetal, and while it doesn’t careen about the room upending the bric-a-brac, it’s not a welcome guest.
They tried for a deftness here (and there seem to be a few grams of residual sugar in the mix…) but the glare of the Scheurebes cast a pitiless light on this fellow.
2021 Herzog Rieslaner Auslese
Alc. A remarkable 11.5%, signaling either a not-very sweet wine or a massively ripe wine – so let’s see.
Or let’s not see, for a fear this may be corked. There is massive botrytis, with which TCA can be confused….but this is, tragically, unmistakable.
2021 Herzog Rieslaner Bereenauslese ++
The signal genius of Martin Franzen, and of the proprietor who enables and applauds his work, is to render even the richest wines with the same sleek lines that move like calligraphy throughout the entire range. This can make a wine like this one both explicable and inexplicable.
Explicable because you can taste it; its flavors are not washed over by gooey blankets of fructose, and inexplicable because you are entirely defeated by the complexity of what you taste. If a wine like this doesn’t pin your shoulders to the mat, you never entered the ring.
Rieslaner can (and often does) reach mega-ripeness by dessication rather than botrytis. You gather clean raisins. I think that’s what I’m tasting here. Because this is more an orgasm of clean Rieslaner than a wine wrapped in a heavy cloak of noble rot. At this level of concentration the talk is “bananas” or plantains, within which is all the fundamental insanity of this astonishing variety. I’ll keep taking teensy sips of this over the next bunch of days, but on first approach the wine is galvanic rather than enveloping. It sends a bliss-taser to your palate. It shrinks you, until you are ecstatically puny.
2024
2021 Haardt Spätburgunder +++
This village-level wine doesn’t appear in the estate’s pricelist. Maybe it’s sold out. It has some alc for a ’21 (13%) and I can’t imagine they chaptalized it. It has the fascinatingly original aromas I recall from last year – this is Pinot Noir with conifer, graphite, artichoke; I mean, Franzen’s like a snake charmer with this variety, coaxing a gleaming exotic head above the basket.
On the palate there’s a burning-leaf (or campfire) kind of smokiness. The texture is smooth and detailed. Some cask-char is evident. It is in effect an explication of Pinot Noir, which is curiously seductive without trying at all to seduce. I mean, it is really silky yet its flavors are dark and mineral. It has neurosurgical focus. It doesn’t pull you in with pretty flavors, but rather with its fastidious clarity of diction.
I’m trying to remember a Pinot Noir with such distinctiveness yet also with such a caressing drinky-ness. It gets “sweeter” as it sits in the glass. Gentle yet urgent, it’s the opposite of uproarious yet you can’t stop thinking about it. I left the bottle for several days, and tasted it again when it was still 80% full. If anything, it had improved. I never actually tasted anything quite like it, and certainly never tasted Pinot Noir so salty and massively graphite-y. It was monstrously good with lamb (rib) chops and anise hyssop.
Improbable, and masterly. The kind of wine that gets overlooked, yet it is, for me, indelible.
2021 Spätburgunder Neustadt “V” ++
The site was reclaimed recently and will eventually be named I assume as an Erste Lage (if not higher), but meanwhile it’s identified by its inscrutable initial.
Fossil-bearing limestone, and I mean no disrespect if I say the flavors are “more expensive.” Some of this is the small-cask vinification and some of it’s the specifics of the site, but we have an overlay of enticing dark-berry juice that rests upon that graphite spine.
It is significantly more delightful and a tiny bit less absorbing. That’s just me; I like being absorbed. And I love being delighted, yet the delights here are relatively fleeting – yet the absorptions are more abiding. You’ll see it in the finish, where the “gorgeous” fruits and berries dissolve before very long, leaving that core of fir and even pepper.
Yet while the wine’s actually on your palate it is remarkably complex, showing a dialogue of mineral, berry, smoke and Pinot’s ineffable sweetness. All that, and it creeps across the palate like a praying mantis. It even shows the “Mourvedre-echo” by which I identify the “dark” animality of St Laurent.
The truth is, I want to like it less because it’s easier to love, but I honestly just can’t. The wine is actually pretty amazing. (If you don’t know Akkesson’s lineup of pepper and chocolate, this is like his dark chocolate bar made with the voatsiperifery pepper, which is as startling as it sounds…)
Hat's off to a dancing and luscious and beguiling Pinot Noir!
2021 Herzog Spätburgunder ++
Now the single-site wine, from sandstone. It’s the first of these to smell “Burgundian.”
It is an excellent example of a wine that speaks a language we know well. It is finely textured, dusty tannin, ample extract, lots of dark chocolate to create symmetry with the sweet fruit. That it is less particular than its siblings is neither here nor there. The “argument” this wine makes suffices to banish my geeky concerns.
If you insisted it was Burgundy while I tasted it blind, I’d say it’s Morey St Denis. Considering its graceful density, it’s the crush of mineral dispersion that’s most impressive. I recognize that some of the smokiness on the finish is due to small-cask, yet nothing in this wine is forced or graceless.
As you see, I’m trying to limn a paradox. I admire and appreciate this wine. I’d be glad to drink it.
And at the same time, as we’ve climbed from the first wine to this one, each has been more plausible than the last. That wouldn’t matter had the first wine not been so sui-generis. It would be foolish to say it’s the best wine of the trio, when the other two are significantly more delicious – and deliciousness is important – but that Haardt seems like a citizen in a nation of one.
In the end, what does it even mean? I lay perhaps too much emphasis on singularity and too little emphasis on sheer sensual joy. I ought to shove my odd proclivities to the side, and join the ecstatic dance this wine delivers. Others might have made it, but others didn’t. As Frank Zappa said, it’s time to “get up on your feet and do the funky Alphonso!”
2022 Spätburgunder Rosé
A whisper of screwcap funk vanishes in seconds. I risk repeating what I wrote last year, but this is a wine that also shows both Martin Franzen’s manifold talents and the genius of the property. Because it would have sufficed to make a “viable” Rosé with bunches of fruit and a silky texture.
Yet here the flavors feel like they were tweezered into the wine, as though the concern couldn’t be anything but to show flavors with the utmost digital precision. Rosé is, obviously, a practical matter. A, it sells, and B, it gives you a use for the juice you bleed off the reds. “Okay” is often good enough.
This isn’t a rosé of great character, but it is a wine of great care, and if you’re using it for your book-club meeting you may wish you’d read a better book.
SEKT Riesling, Brut N.V.
They claim 39 months on the lees. Judging by the cork, this was disgorged over two years ago. Color and bead are both good, and the fragrance is appealing.
I wasn’t a great fan last year. Is this the same wine? It tastes a lot more mature and integrated; it has more umami, and the thrust of the fruit is less ungainly, better poised. It runs to melons and mangoes, and it does what good Sekt sometimes does – it makes me think of Marne-Valley Chardonnay Champagnes, with their relative plushness and plenitude.
This time it’s worthy of the general level at Müller-Catoir. It’s especially nice from the smaller Juhlin “2.0.” It encourages close study, and a lot of grower-Champagne isn’t as good as this is.
There’s also a Pinot Blanc Sekt I’ll try to taste next time I’m at the winery. My sense of this Riesling is to respect its ambition, to enjoy its virtues, and to wonder whether it would warrant the effort I sense would be needed, for the wine to reach what it is grasping for. Autolytic brioche? Check. The imponderables of texture that make fine Champagne so haunting? Not quite yet.
But that’s as may be. Meanwhile there is pleasure to be had here, and I will set about having it.
The second (and final) look was much the same; a little more flesh in the middle, a bit more butter in the brioche, and still a tic of brusqueness in the stitching. (Forgive my “literary” affects; it means the threads that hold the structure together are less fine than would be ideal for a wine with these virtues.) Catoir is an estate well poised to join the current of ambitious German fizz, and this is a step in that direction.
I think it’s possible to make fine sparkling wine from Riesling, in a sort of Blanc de Blancs idiom. The question is, do the growers want to? Some of them do – I think of Diel in this context – but to make excellent sparkling Riesling starts with making excellent Riesling, and the temptation to make a wine that can be sold earlier (and that entails less work) has to be persuasive. Yet I recall all the Vins Claires I tasted from Chardonnay in Champagne, many of which tasted a lot like Riesling….but then, there’s the matter of chalk.
2022 M-C Weissburgunder
The second time I tasted this I was ashamed to have mis-read it. Yet did I, or did the bottle withhold itself when it was first opened? Screwcapped wines can be mute beneath a sulfur shroud; maybe it was that. The wine, despite what you’re about to read, was lovely. In the interest of accuracy, this was my initial impression:
“M-C” is the estate level. It’s always interesting to see what a cellar like this can do with this often “fluffy” variety, which can lapse into leesiness and which is charming in that vein. Martin Franzen has no use for fluff, however yummy it can be. His aim is clarity, precision, a coolness of texture that can strike some drinkers as aloof. I find it honorable and, in its cerebral way, delightful.
This is a snappy sort of wine that does the job for which it’s intended. In the best sense “simple” but not mundane, it’s a pragmatic wine of the type they call “useful,” but I’ll confess I’d find it more useful if it were less sharp. It’s also atypically terse for a Catoir wine.
All of these things were much less true when I re-tasted. The aromas were more expressive, the fruit was more evident, and the finish was more engaging.
2022 Herzog Weissburgunder
One of two Erste Lage wines, sandstone this time. Aromas are clearly more serious now.
It’s a chewy, crusty sort of Pinot Blanc. It has “attitude” and ambition. It tastes as much of the sandstone site as it does of the variety. It’s muted compared to Riesling, but most things are.
I like the wine, but such moderate praise as I have for it can seem damningly faint. I wish it were enough to simply like a wine sometimes, because there are things to appreciate here, but not to thirst after. That, alas, will have to do.
2022 Herrenletten Weissburgunder
I’ve been told that “Letten” is a kind of chalky limestone. The translate function terms it “Latvian,” which is kinda droll.
Oak is in the picture now (notwithstanding the website’s describing a cold vinification in stainless steel), and it’s reasonably discreet. The wine, overall, is more “adult” than its sibling – but Herrenletten, in my experience, is a much better vineyard than Herzog.
I’d rather this were less woody, in fact, because there’s a terroir aspect that cowers behind it and struggles to assert its chalky jasmine and white tea umami, let alone the salinity one anticipates from limestone. You can make a case that the dialogue is synergistic (as did one reviewer who awarded an inexplicable “95 points” to the wine), but I experience it as less-than-coherent.
Still, this is no small achievement, for which more than polite applause is warranted. I’ll keep paying it the close attention is asks for, and maybe even understand the “95” before too much longer.
But in this case, no. The wine is very good, perhaps a little too polite, quite pleasant to drink but it isn’t, you know, beyond good and evil.
DRY RIESLINGS:
Franzen tells me the ’22 Rieslings are “subtle, interwoven, though I do think they need both time and patience. The long dry spell in summer ’22 gives a certain angularity to the wines, that simply needs time to pull back.”
2022 M-C Riesling
“Trocken” only appears in tiny print on the back label. As always, this estate-level wine smells wonderful. (It smelled even more wonderful when they made a feinherb version for me, but that’s as may be….)
After the fetching aroma, the palate feels rather circumspect, and the finish is clipped and abrupt. Remembering the “issue” with the screwcapped Pinot Blanc, I’ll share impressions-in-progress and ask you to understand these may evolve, maybe significantly.
It benefits from the explications of the Jancis glass, in which it shows a robust set of mid-palate nuances. It’s still less simpatico than other vintages I recall, but some ‘22s do seem to have that phenolic bite the 2020s also had, and pending a positive evolution from the open bottle, this can feel a little frosty, as though it’s displeased about something or other. I like precision in wines, but sometimes a wine can be focused out of all sensual life. It becomes less a wine than an idea of a wine.
Let’s see what the days bring.
Alas they have brought no change. I’ll consider this wine an outlier, since I’ve never tasted it so snippy.
2022 Haardt Riesling
The village level now. The wine has a sort of crescendo as it moves across the palate, but it is quite reticent at first. Again it’s better from the Jancis. And again it’s overall gestalt is rather fixed, obdurate.
The finish reminds me of the last five minutes of a therapy session where you’re finally getting somewhere and suddenly you hear those blood-freezing words – “Times up; we’ll get into this next week.” I also wonder whether this is an actual village-cuvée or if it’s actually declassified (single-site) Herzog, which is what it tastes like. It’s kind of roughly mineral. It’s certainly admirable in many ways, but one isn’t fond of it.
This is true even with the textural refinement given by the Jancis glass. It’s even more true. The finish is the wine’s best feature.
Tasted again two days later – and the bottle hasn’t been broached in the interim - it’s more expressive. But what it’s expressing is something granitic and salty. There’s an umami that recalls the scent of the rapeseed fields when they’re in flower. While it’s still a formal sort of wine, it lost the admonishing character it showed freshly opened. It’s better than merely “good,” but how much better will depend on the degree to which you vibe to a somewhat somber sort of Riesling.
2022 Mandelgarten Riesling
The sandy soil of this fine site in Gimmeldingen is “GG-qualified” (and is actually offered as a GG by other growers, unless I am mistaken), and I’ve always liked its wildness. And here, we take a big step up.
The aromas are discernibly more complex and the palate is markedly richer. There are no structural/textural “issues” in sight.
At first sniff I had a curious sense of Austria. And I’d only identify Germany by the sleekness of body and the general sense of coolness. Speaking of which –
The prevailing cliché about (cellarmaster) Martin Franzen is that he makes decidedly cool wines because he’s Mosel-born and that’s his paradigm. This observation, if it was ever true, is facile and superficial. Franzen has been in the Pfalz over 20 years now, and it’s obviously permeated his sensibility. What is true is that he steers his wines by structure, believing that fruit will follow when structure is impeccable. After all, he knows what he picked.
The wines could be seen as gauzy and cool by Pfalz standards, but what are Pfalz standards these days? One taster might say this wine is aloof while another might say it is meditative. Each judgment is reasonable. I find enough substance to mitigate a certain cerebral element, plus I simply like how it tastes.
On second encounter it’s even slinkier and more insinuating. Still on the cerebral side (which is fine!), there is pixilated detail here, and you know? Sometimes the rabble don’t want to be roused.
2022 Neustadt “V” Riesling
As with the Spätburgunder, this is the initial of a vineyard pending legal approval to identify. They are stoked about it, with ample reason, as far as I have tasted. At some point it will become a GG.
This is way juicier than the previous wine, and it is also somewhat less detailed in the mineral sense. It’s the first wine to really allude to “fruit.” Sensually it is richly satisfying. It has the torque of significant wine. It’s earthy and fills the gob. It’s incipiently peachy. It is also the first among these to be both fine and tasty.
You could say it’s very Pfalz. It reads that way. With air it spreads out and grows saltier. The cooler you serve it the more mineral it shows. It’s a lovely glass of wine, and whether it shows a Grand Cru Riesling in the making, I think is too soon to say.
We did drink a glass in the kitchen while we made supper. The juiciness leads to thoughts of grub. Thus the bottle is even more developed, and tasting it again now it’s revealing a mineral edge that was only inferential before. There’s also a phenolic scratch on the finish. What’s noteworthy is the mixing of a stern graphite-y mineral with an almost fleshy texture.
It resembles, but does not attain, the splendid quality of the Spätburgunder, but it is very good, and makes a plausible case for eventual GG status.
2022 Herrenletten Riesling ++
With 13% alc it’s the first one to cross the 12.5% barrier. And it’s no secret I love this vineyard. And if you taste it, there will be no secret why I love this vineyard, which really ought to be a GG, considering it is superior to several other GGs…..
The wines can be (and is here) first cousins to old-vines Champagnes from Avize – some of the Agraparts or Varnier’s Cuvée St. Denis. The virtues are eerily similar – those keen white flavors, the precision of nuance and allusion, the amazingly expressive greeting, and the intricate dissolve of mineral at the end.
I’ll go way out on a limb. Considering the last 10-15 vintages I’ve tasted from this estate, I’d make a case that Herrenletten is every bit as good as the GG Breumel, and ought to be its companion. (In fact I like these even more, but that’s just my preference.)
The wine seems to have it all – a wonderful opening aroma, a perfect integration of texture, length and flavor, a searchingly complex finish, and apart from that it tastes good. Truly an unsung hero of Pfalz Riesling.
In some ways it reminds me of the Kamptal’s Gaisberg, perhaps without the latter’s tropical fruit profile. It oscillates between an otherworldly flashing of flavor and a determined firmness of structure. The result is a kind of subliminal “sweetness” of the physiological kind.
2022 Bürgergarten Riesling +
Back to 12.5% alc. It has (what I call) the Muschelkalk aroma, an earthy smell that comes from fossil-bearing limestone, and which can be seen wherever this soil is found. Taste the Boxler Grand Cru Sommerberg (except for the granitic “Eckberg” bottling) and you’ll see what I mean.
It can be an earthy aroma or a fine one, as it is here. As a rule it’s adamant, Romanesque, thick, but the genius of Martin Franzen is to give this wine wings. The balance here is impeccable. Nothing, not even the tiniest thing, is out of place. Earth, spice(s), allusions to citric fruits, minerality, all are united in the most seamless synergy.
It isn’t more melodic than the Herrenletten, but it’s a different sort of melody, more lyric, even (if the word weren’t so twee) daintier. However you describe it, the wine is beautiful, with the fervent aromas of flowering Springtime trees (plums and cherries!).
It’s a smaller wine than the Herrenletten but it is also more charming. Still, like all of these, it will “show” best if you’re not studying the (rather brusque) finish, or in other words – food.
2022 Bürgergarten “Im Breumel” GG +
Between the heavy bottle and the eschewing of “Riesling” on the label, this is all getting too adorably affected, I often feel.
I know this wine well. I remember when the estate obtained the Clos, and how proud they were, and I remember the 2001 Spätlese (#2134) that catapulted me into the outer orbits, in the days before the site could be identified. It definitely has all the elements of a GG – among which it is among the more inscrutable.
If you’re looking for a blast of torque, it isn’t here, and is never here. This isn’t Kalkofen or Pechstein. It offers an interior complexity for which you have to dig below its “entertainment value.” And that business of digging below is part of why I admire Franzen (and Catoir) so much, because I know how easy it would be to make a blockbuster GG from this site. You’d get invited to the VIP-room, where all the starlets would offer their “esoteric skills” for your delectation – or you could make a wine like this, that requests that you think about it….
The subterranean layers are obscurely earthy here. It’s a concatenation of spices and mycelium and ancient rocks, hard to make into a “tasting note” with its sequence of associations. There’s a kind of eternal dignity here that is simply more than the regular Bürgergarten, but I’m not sure the “more” makes it more pleasurable. It’s just another key signature of complexity.
Put it this way: you don’t want to be distracted when you taste or drink this. It asks that of you, and you give it. With the previous two wines, their particular expressiveness simply joins the party.
At the end of this dry-Riesling flight, I have to respect the integrity of maintaining a cool un-showy style even in a vintage that maybe didn’t suit it. I say that because of the pair of superb Spätleses coming up shortly. As I write these words, I’ve tasted everything, and if you predicted my favorite wines would be the Muscats I wouldn’t be surprised, and if you added the Spätburgunders to your forecast I’d be very surprised. But so it was.
JUST SO YOU KNOW: THIS WAS ONE DAY’S TASTING, ALL THE DRY RIESLINGS. THE NEXT “FLIGHT” WILL BE THE TWO SCHEUREBES, THE TWO MUSKATELLERS, AND THE THREE RIESLINGS WITH RS. MY HEART GOES PIT-A-PAT JUST THINKING ABOUT IT….
Martin writes that Scheurebe was the variety crankiest about the severe drought. “They’re good,” he says, “but they miss a little of the vibration they might have shown.” This may be true, but I liked them!
2022 M-C Scheurebe
Trocken of course. And rather mannerly, as Scheurebe goes. The initial aromas run to cassis, nutmeg and grapefruit, but delicately rendered.
The wine is lean and racy. Scheu can be rampant but what’s emphatic here is the sharpness of contour and the herbal minty attack. But, as seems to be the case with all these Catoir ‘22s, the wine is far more expressive from the Jancis. (This isn’t always the case, and even when it is, it isn’t necessarily positive.)
It takes a while for the varietal’s wry angularity to display itself. I like me a mischievous Scheurebe. This one gets there, but not without a bit of cajoling. And even as it gets saltier and more ornery, it retains a certain finesse; a calm sort of wine that resists putting on a show. But it’s been in the glass(es) for fifteen minutes now, and keeps getting better. I’m beginning to love it.
Indeed, all it needed was air. Tasting it again a day later I’m thrilled to the toenails. It’s super-expressive Scheu that’s lighter than gossamer, a weeny bit constricted and prickly, but at last a fine chilly roar of Scheurebe. For the thirteen people who love Scheurebe as much as I do; decant this, swish it the hell around in the carafe, and drink drink drink.
2022 Haardt Scheurebe +
I surmise this includes the single-site (Mandelring) bottling they’ve sometimes made when the harvest volume (and quality) made it possible. It smells marvelous – classic fine Scheurebe. The variety has a vulgar side, which I like for its erotic vitality, but I also like Scheu when it’s “dressed-up” and urbane.
When it shows its cassis and sage profiles, it can also show a bitterness one likes or doesn’t. I like it for this variety, exceptionally, and I like it here. It makes me want to roast a piece of Sea Bass coated with olive oil and fennel-pollen.
Considering this is a Scheu that “plays well with others” I do admire it and like it quite a bit. I accept its bitterness as a price worth paying for something so detailed and articulate. It’s a wine that makes the case for appreciating the variety (as opposed to my slobbery crush on it), which some tasters reject as being overly gaudy.
There was, again, quite an awakening over 24 hours.
But it helps if you arrived already liking Scheurebe. I don’t see it making converts. The poise between introversion and vehemence is rather tenuous. I’ll be very happy to drink it, but I’d describe it as an excellent wine that isn’t really beautiful. It also overlaps somewhat with the creature I am about to encounter….
“The Muscat was just the opposite; it loved the weather conditions, and I must say the vintages between ’19 and ’22 are unmatched for this variety,” Martin tells me.
I’ll say!
2022 Haardt Muskateller +
I’m flipping my often-uttered statement onto its head. I think these are the great Muscats of the world, only equaled by the best of Zind-Humbrecht.
Considering the ravishing aromas, the palate entry might feel diffident. Might! Because the wine billows and swells into a rich, gripping and marvelous end palate that leads to a superb finish.
Look, we don’t go to dry Muscat looking for subtlety nor for the Nth degree of complexity. Yet we draw very close to finding both of these things now. These aromas could be described as lurid, yet they express with such poignant tact, I dissolve with happiness. I can’t fathom how a wine that arrives so gracefully can also be so determinedly expressive, and so careful about expressing with the utmost definition.
We have the usual – “the usual” – spices and minerality and that basil-oil thing I’ve seen no other Muscat display. It leads me to wonder….are these not only the world’s great Muscats, but are they also some of the world’s great wines?
I think that they are.
2022 Bürgergarten Muskateller ++
A unicorn-wine – I think it’s only been made two or three times. For all of i manifold virtues, it is a shy yielder, and to make a single-site wine requires a generous harvest.
I am blasted into orbit by this wine; thus it seems churlish to kvetch yet again about the STUPID HEAVY BOTTLE – yet I must.
This is like a spawn of Muscat with the Breumel Riesling GG; it has that wine’s rich earth-and-stone solidity along with its para-fruit complexity. It is in effect a Cru that happens to have been made with Muscat, and which shows the Cru regardless. This gives rise to all kinds of speculations on the nature of a Cru and whether it requires a given variety to “show” itself.
In this case the answer is no, but the next question is – what about ten years from now?
I don’t know whether this was made available in the U.S. but, really, wherever you may be in the world, my advice is to lunge at this wine and score all you can of it. Will it be hedonic? That depends!
What you will get above the zealous minerality is a thing that isn’t really “fruit” as we normally perceive it. It isn’t really grapey (which is the thing they lob at Muscat; “It’s just grapey, what’s the big deal?”) but it seems to refer to every single leaf in the mint family (especially tarragon and lemon grass) along with ginger and shisho and even rhubarb, and everything sung with all the wild abandon of a well-trained voice.
It has the sober magnificence of that which isn’t easy. Yet it is far from inscrutable. Just an amazing wine….
SWEET RIESLINGS:
(NOTE – ALL OF THESE WERE TASTED AT FIRST AT FRIDGE TEMPERATURE, I.E., 40º)
2022 Gimmeldingen Riesling Kabinett
It has the attractive aromas of Pfalz Riesling. Earthy and peachy at once.
On the heels of the Muscat, its sweetness is “apparent,” though by modern German standards it isn’t overly high for Kabinett; alc is a reassuring 9%. It’s a polite and pleasing Kab, with this estate’s typical clarity and focus, without any elements to demand your attention. I mean this as a compliment: this is what the genre ought to be.
2022 Bürgergarten Riesling Spätlese +
The aromas are higher-toned now, typical for this vineyard. The wine “acts” drier than the Kabinett – though it isn’t – and the entire impression does what the best “sweet” Rieslings do, seeming to default to an underlying and fundamental dryness. That yin-yang is infinitely more delicious and interesting than mere fruit or that ingratiating business that passes for “charm.”
We have a slinky angular profile here, more floral than fruity, and seriously drinky. If I were one of those ghouls pathologically averse to sweetness, I’d enjoy this wine more than the ostensibly “drier” Kabinett. It’s a wine with high cheekbones and penetrating blue eyes. I hope the language police will forgive me if I see this wine, not as “feminine” but as ladylike, that is, like a particular kind of woman whom we all have encountered (and who, in my case, probably scolded me….).
2022 Mandelgarten Riesling Spätlese +
I cheated and peeked at the deets. This is sweeter than the previous wine on paper, yet it tastes drier and firmer, and has a half percent more alcohol.
Typically for this terroir, it shows more herbs and earth than the more delicately floral Bürgergarten. The influence of loess is apparent; you could be forgiven for guessing Grüner Veltliner on a first blind sniff.
You know, there is a wisdom here. Such a perfectly balanced wine doesn’t just appear. Not every cellar master knows how to appreciate sweetness without being ruled by it. This wine is as much savory as it is sweet, and the lovely firm undergirding of solidity hates “sugar” as much as you do.
Yet is also suggests a truly subversive question – why, if you can fashion wines with RS that are this perfect, would you keep insisting on those brutalist Trocken wines? And I say this as a lover of dry German Rieslings, and as someone who drinks 90% dry wine in my private life.
Even worse than wines drier than they need to be are the many wines that are way sweeter than they need to be. I suspect the sugar-haters have had too many of those treacly abominations. Finally, there is more than just a wisdom here – there is the antidote to a tsunami of wrong thinking about the role of sweetness in a Riesling wine.
It's been a long time since I had a Spätlese and felt, yes, exactly this.
2025
THE PINOT NOIRS
These have been markedly, sometimes shockingly successful in the last several vintages, and I receive them eagerly and anticipate their remarkable originality.
I am also tasting them at two different temperatures, because the coolers I have them in (the cellar is too cold for reds so I bring them up and put them in the coolers so they don’t get too warm) only go up three fourths of the bottle, meaning the first glass is about 4-5 degrees warmer than the second one.
2022 Haardt Spätburgunder ++
The village wine has 13% alc and a normal-weight bottle. Yet somehow I do not find myself thinking “Well this can’t possibly be serious wine…”
In fact it is very serious wine. You see it right away by its unforced color, and then you sniff it and are delighted by its herbal/artichoke scents. Then the palate attack is full of the most delicious Pinot Noir sweetness, not (obviously) sugar but the beaming clement nature that makes PN so seductive.
Flavors run to dark chocolate, peppercorns, resinous herbs, campfire; but this wine is more than the sum of its “flavors.” It is, as it has recently been, a gesture of originality and of great distinctiveness. Its texture is mega-juicy yet its gestalt is articulate, even strict. It is also more complex than many wines of greater “stature,” and I admire it unreservedly.
It reminds me a little of Ziereisen’s Talrain in its peppery outlines, though this wine’s more polished (which is not a slam on my favorite wine from Ziereisen), and it’s also a portrait of what happens when you strain a Pinot Noir through a Riesling sensibility. Honestly I’m blown away. I need a cellar full of this.
Since those words I’ve sipped it once and tasted it another time. Remains, in my view, profoundly original and delicious without jumping through any of the usual hoops.
2022 Herzog Spätburgunder ++
(This is 1er Cru or “Erste Lage” and therefore it must have a PRETENTIOUS, ANNOYING AND STUPID HEAVY BOTTLE. To my friends at Müller-Catoir, trust me, you do not need this. Your wines are already elite, and there is no need to “signal” their stature while damaging the environment, not to mention the backs of each human who has to handle the cases.)
As last year, the first impression here is that you are familiar with what you’re smelling. It is a highly glossy and enticing version of something known to you. And that is wonderful, and only diminished – if at all – by the stunning originality of the preceding wine.
But hat’s off – this is bordering on spectacular. Yes there’s a more overt gesture of cask, yet it is gracefully blended into the whole, and the wine is wicked seductive and also articulately structured. We have chocolate again, this time with morels and really assertive black peppers, but mostly we have the gorgeous-improbable, the thing where you wonder How can this be? It’s like a palimpsest of two differing shapes, one of which is spherical and the other vertical and linear. The finish stretches over many fields and byways.
And in a curious way, this gestures in the direction of Nebbiolo, as if it needed to be any more compelling. It also recalls old-school (and Old World) Malbec, as we once tasted it from Cahors.
It’s also the artichoke side of PN, and while I start off being wary of its additional torque and “intensity,” I’m finally blown away by its cussed distinctiveness.
2022 Vogelsang GG ++
(The good news is Vogelsang is now designated as a GG, and has the embossed bottle to prove it. The bad news is it doesn’t say Spätburgunder on the front label anymore – we are supposed to have memorized this, in all our free time – and then of course we have the you-know-what to contend with. These bottles ought to come with a 50%-off coupon for your local chiropractor to repair the trauma to your vertebrae.)
The wine – which is thoroughly excellent – performs the requisite gestures for “GG;” the succulence, the oak, the power and “sweetness.” No sane person would despise these things, though one could entertain the thought that this is the most formulaic of the three Pinots. (Or rather the two Pinots and the one Pinot-Incognito.)
What finally elevates this wine to the level to which it aspires is all the many things that occur behind-the-scenes, where there is a rich almost swollen depth of terroir and minerality behind the sexy overture of the GG “type.” It is a fabulous internal mass you could miss if you tasted superficially and wrote it off as “yeah, oaky, been there done that…”
It has most and perhaps all the attributes of greatness, including the advance of that dense mineral core that finally overcomes the plausible first impression. It is truly a sensationally serious wine. Yet what most impresses me is the statement made by the entire family, three original wines – one of them arguably sui generis – that make me wonder whether anyone else is making such wines in the Pfalz if not all of Germany. I’m not talking about better or worse, but rather of an imprint of distinctiveness that cannot be faked. I mean, one wine calls Nebbiolo to mind, and this one has relatives in Etna Rosso, and I get the impression that (cellarmaster) Martin Franzen never tasted another German PN and just followed his grapes to a place of blissful expression. (I’m sure this isn’t true, by the way, but what is true is that Martin has an admirable sang froid about answering to his own gods.)
I’ve spent 78 minutes tasting these three wines. Time well spent. They are equivalently great each in its particular weight and concentration. As a group they are deeply inspiring. Anyone who reads this should race towards them.
THE PINOT BLANCS
These consist of four still and one sparkling wine. Pinot Blanc sells more easily than Scheurebe or Rieslaner, and therefore and thus. In prior vintages these have been rapturously reviewed, to the point I wondered at my relative coolness. Will this time be different?
Part of this depends on what we want Pinot Blanc to be. It can be twisty and mineral (e.g., Dautel’s village wine) or frisky and shellfishy (e.g., Dautel’s estate wine) or creamy and leesy (e.g.,….oh, you get the point), and sometimes I have wondered whether Franzen’s PBs aren’t maybe too Riesling-y.
That was less of an issue with this group, and again I felt a lifting of ambition as the quartet rises closer to the level of the other whites. Also, and curiously, these benefited markedly with air, even more than the Rieslings did, and it reminded me again how easy it is to underrate Franzen’s wines early on, when they feel encased in a chilly kind of carapace.
2023 M-C Weissburgunder
Well this is attractive. It has the fragrance of off-the-boat-an-hour-ago scallops, and the palate is chiseled and hewn as Franzen’s wines are. It is highly crisp and fresh, with the bracing finish of the ‘23s, but within all this jiggly energy is a smile of welcome.
You’d probably guess Pinot Blanc though the wine isn’t hugely “varietal.” In effect it’s a wine with a purpose, which it fulfills, and it makes me hopeful that my fish guy will have local striped bass tomorrow, because I have just the wine to sip with it.
(He did, and I did, and everyone was happy.)
2023 Haardt Weissburgunder +
As you know, I don’t amend these notes once written, but I’ll add to them if my opinions change. I think you should know the process of engagement with a wine, and also the movement of impressions whereby the end can differ from the beginning.
Thus, in order to not bury the lead, this wine was dramatically different when sipped alongside a perfectly nice, cordial and enjoyable Italian white. We approved of that wine and were pleased to be drinking it, but just as a lark I brought this Catoir up from the cellar, thinking it might taste shrill next to the amiable Italian (which had all the pedigree one might desire), yet the very opposite occurred – this wine absolutely screamed in contrast to the other bottle; it was more brilliant, more expressive, more complex and simply more alive in every conceivable way. It reminded me of how I’d feel in my merchant days, when I would consider the many “very nice” wines on the market and muse that If I ever let my portfolio sink to the level of the “very nice,” I should just hang it up.
Germany is a perennially undervalued source for the many of the world’s BEST white wines, and attention should be paid to the amazing advanced among the reds.
Meanwhile, back to my first impression of this masterpiece, which was, let’s say….wrong.
“The village wine, as you know by now. And the wine is immediately more serious. It’s twistier, it has more byways, but it also has more fond, which is their word for the heart of the sauce or the consommé – we might call it the demi-glace – and we also have a greater richness of nuance, in this case root-veggies (especially salsify and j-arts) along with the variety’s mown-hay sweetness and even a wintergreen note.
A lot to enjoy here.
You have the usual articulate outlines but in this case there’s also a pleasing umami leading to a tactful but tasty finish. It wants to make friends.”
It just kept climbing; it got a second wind and then a second-wind off the second wind and it ended up on an airy perch with a huge view behind it. You want to beg the flavor “Whatever it is you’re doing, for god’s sake don’t stop…”
(And like all high-energy wines, its assertiveness, so galvanizing at first, can begin to pall with repetition – or I’d have “rated” it even higher.)
2023 Herzog Weissburgunder
It’s an “erste Lage;” guess what that means in terms of bottle weight? You guessed it!
It has the aromas it should have; deeper, richer, more vinosity and more terroir. It is serious white wine and it justifies its affect.
It has a lot of warmth for a ’23. That and mid-palate mineral, and a warm toasted semolina finish. The wine is beautiful in some ways, and admirable in every way. The lemon blossom honey in the mid palate is really encouraging. It’s refined, subtly salty, largely inferential but I love the delicate richness. I’m thinking back and thinking it’s the loveliest PB I’ve had from Catoir.
But there’s also the underlying stoniness of the best Maconnais wines. Cask is used effectively. The wine purrs. (As it should from an estate named Cat-oir….) The last one was more thrilling, and this one is more lovely.
2023 Herrenletten Weissburgunder
1er Cru again. Heavy bottle again! I may have tasted out of sequence (this has 13% alc vs. the Herzog’ 13.5%) but I assumed the excellent Herrenletten site would make the best wine.
Turns out I was right. (Has to happen once in a while…) This wine is….call it more terse, clipped, shorter compared to the inner warmth of the Herzog – the “bellow” of the Herzog, for my literate readers – but it’s more interesting in every way, especially if you love Chablis. Not to mention if you love Fleur de Sel….
Truly, if you tasted blind Chablis would be your first impression, and rightly so. These are the flavors most exciting to me, and I’m duly jazzed, but honesty compels me to acknowledge the Herzog is the better wine, even if I vibe more to this one.
Still, you have to chuckle at the crazed mineral sizzle here. Plus it’s like a basmati pudding made with coconut milk and powdered scree. It’s bracing in all the good ways. And it is a wine more of its terroir than its grape variety. The Herzog, for all its virtues, is softer.
Cask is more overt here, and it’s an open question whether it plays well with the “white” chalky vim from the terroir. It seemed to work better “tasting” than sipping. What I need now are fresh mussels with a saffron sauce made from the shells….
N.V. SEKT Weissburgunder +
Thus ends the PB flight….
Appealing aroma, properly yeasty. Especially rich from the Jancis glass, which I never use for fizz but am using now so I don’t have to wash a zillion glasses.
I am very happy with this, happier than I’ve been with the several Riesling Sekts I’ve had here. This is charming, almost cunningly tasty. It’s only discreetly varietal but it’s led by the prettiest leesy cream, and if it were any other non-Champagne bubbly you’d think “Wow, this is yummy.” Is the toastiness too plausible? Sure it is! But it is also addictively appealing, not least due to the sideways flavors of pea-vine and sorrel (There’s also a ton of tartrates in the bottle, which I think is a good thing.)
A Sekt like this doesn’t have to be great-shakes. It has to be delicious and interesting. And I have to be less hesitant to use the Jancis for bubbles going forward.
That said, with the second tasting I used the Juhlin 2.0 (the smaller one) because I wanted to see how the fruit held up. (I was confident the tapioca leesiness would still express.) If anything the wine is even better, and viewed along with the Riesling Sekt – coming up – this has to be seen as a triumph for the estate.
DRY RIESLINGS:
2023 M-C Riesling
Sensationally aromatic, enticingly so.
On the palate it’s a finely balanced dry Riesling of better than “everyday” quality. There’s just a hint of the ’23 rasp at the end, but less than feared.
It’s the same chord or elements I taste on Von Winning’s estate-Riesling – meyer lemon, yuzu, pineapple – just in the next higher octave. Von Winning’s is earthier and more strictly spicy (ginger and nutmeg) while Catoir’s is cooler and more lemon-grassy. This also has an especially appealing finish, showing umami flavors not glimpsed previously.
I liked it more with each sip. It embodies craftsmanship and attention to detail.
2023 Haardt Riesling
The village wine has the same 12.5% alc as the M-C. That said, it has “ideas” which express initially as more interiority. The Jancis glass is quicker to coax out its attributes.
Yet once it started to display itself it became an appealing creature with a lot of tertiary flavor and a chipper sort of toastiness. The first-impression note follows….
I mean, it’s a highly focused vintage for an estate who make highly focused wines. We have a richer middle here, and a greater depth of spice (mace, allspice, baies rose) and we also have – it can’t be helped – the low-pH astringency of ’23, though it’s only at the very end.
Until then we have a wine that embodies the idea of clarity of flavor, and also a wine that’s thoroughly good without the little ignition of fascination that lifts a wine into the wow territory. One has no right to require such a thing in a wine of this category, and I’m entirely happy with this scrupulous, refined Riesling, especially the (smaller) glass that emphasizes its juiciness.
2023 Mandelgarten Riesling
The first of the 1er Crus (a.k.a. Erste Lage), and <sigh>….accordingly, the first of the egregious HEAVY BOTTLES.
Mandelgarten is sandy, and the wines are sere and herbal. This bottle shows a subtle oxidation which I ascribe to a cork that was wiggly in the neck and (too) easy to extract. Beneath this is the usual mineral density – the wine is a 21-gun-salute for lovers of mineral flavors – but I doubt I am tasting it in its true form. Still, even this form is awfully interesting!
2023 Bürgergarten Riesling ++
Has it’s typically pretty aromas orbiting around kirsch, including blossoms and tobacco and a hint of the noyeux of almond and rhubarb.
That, plus it’s effing delicious.
Lissome, articulate, rippling and just a tiny bit too much flesh to call “sinewy.” The flavors follow the aromas, adding white lilac and hyssop, all filling out a wonderfully salty outline. A jolt of mineral appears near the end, when you might also be amazed how a wine can be simultaneously pliant and crisp to the point of crackle.
A success on many levels, not least as a ’23 that avoids the venomous sharpness with which so many others are afflicted. Rather, it swells beautifully at the end, when it reveals a sensational mélange of tertiary savor and upfront minerality.
Kudos to Catoir, for the second consecutive vintage that really shines a light on this vineyard.
2023 Herrenletten Riesling +
It’s the 26th of February and Boston is enjoying a thaw. We have 50º on the deck where I go to taste outside, and earlier in the day I took a walk around Jamaica Pond, the first day in weeks where you could walk outside. The pond was still mostly frozen over, yet there were patches where snow still stood atop the ice, patches of bare ice, patches of water where the ice had given way, and the day was windy with fast moving white clouds giving way to bolts of sunlight.
The colors on the water were remarkable; every shade of gray and white you’d ever seen, with little daubs of blue light where open water reflected the sky.
I tell you this because Herrenletten is my favorite among the Catoir Rieslings, for a character I’d describe as “thorough chalk and various whitenesses.” It totally ought to be a GG. In some ways its crushed-stony firmness is akin to (the Rheingau’s) Wisselbrunnen GG – that side-by-side vertical tasting would be revealing – and what we seem to have here, as is often the case, is a Riesling assuming the form of a Blanc de Blancs Champagne.
It doesn’t have the yielding charm of the Bürgergarten, but it has a ringent grip and strength, and flavors that seem to arrange quince and yuzu and different way with every sip. Its parade of mineral recalls the ’21 Chablis. It is grippy and jazzy. I love it.
And I also acknowledge that it’s less “tasty” than the above, and that people who prefer this will relish wines with a lot of grip and snap, and who adore the ”sucking-on-oyster-shells” aspect of Chablis.
2023 Neustadt “V” Riesling
Here’s a “wha…?” situation, as this is already a GG for Spätburgunder yet a mere village wine for Riesling. It probably has to do with vine age, or so I surmise. The bottle is certainly heavy.
The goal of GG status is defensible; it tastes a lot like (Deidesheim) Hohenmorgen and that’s a big-boy. It’s rather an umami-bomb, on the heels of Bürgergarten and Herrenletten, and at first I’m nonplussed. It’s oblique to the “family” DNA here.
The wine is good, obviously, but knowing its backstory makes me question what we might be chasing here. In this instance I’d believe Martin Franzen if he told me the wine always needs 2-3 years to reveal itself, and I perceive a delicate elucidation of flavors arising from the swollen mid-palate. Finally I sniff the empty glasses, often a harbinger of eventual development, and find (surprisingly) the little Spiegelau is more expressive.
Thus I poured another sip into it. I start, maybe, to see the light. Maybe? Sometimes you see what you’re most intensely looking for, right? I think we need a few days to grab this slippery critter.
The bottle was undisturbed for four days and now I see it again, on another 50s day after a little chill-down in between. It remains aloof, only showing glimpses of the things that would justify its ambition. I don’t mind wines that just don’t want to converse with you, but this one mutters disconnected syllables, and that tells me it is a few years too soon to appraise it.
2023 Bürgergarten “Im Breumel” Riesling GG +?
We seem, sadly, to be corked. Let’s see. The cork smells fine but what does that signify? Please please please don’t be corked.
On the palate I think it is not corked. Indeed I think it is pretty impressive, especially for a wine that’s usually so demure, and that earns it less cachet than the “showier” GGs – which is most of them. Actually this reminds me of (Deidesheim) Langenmorgen, the most cerebral among those Crus. You could call Breumel pedagogical, strait-laced, you could ask “Where is its power?” But in this instance you would mislead yourself.
Because this wine has a deeply embedded seethe, one that expresses erogenously, as Grand Cru wines always do. That doesn’t mean it’s sexy-pants. It means there is a life-force in the aromas and flavors that supersede “fruits, flowers, and minerals.” It is something we cannot account for.
Though if you groped fervently enough you might find words for what you taste and smell. They’d probably be esoteric. I’m “getting” mostly black tea and chicorees, for whatever that is worth.
And honestly, what is it worth? Mostly for the taster it’s just a calisthenic, to “identify” elements to his own satisfaction. But for the reader? I suppose she reads those associations thinking “I like raspberries so I’ll probably like this wine,” the problem being she may not taste raspberries when she drinks the wine. I wonder, are we (tasters) really communicating, or are we just transcribing our fumbles?
I feel right now that the most accurate I can be is to say the wine is grippy, not powerful but with a focused intensity, and it has a para-sensuality that’s convincingly expressive but that defies words.
Indeed the wine is so communicative that it overrides the 2% cork I think it has. Franzen would have fetched another bottle, I’m sure, and wondered as I do – “should I have?
Time, as always, is the guide, and with three days’ open it’s clear that we have the most damnable sort of TCA, the kind that doesn’t obviously stink but that fucks with the wine insidiously. I disavow anything I wrote, and it’s still clear that we have potentially stunning minerality in play.
N.V. Riesling SEKT Brut +
This has a very fine aroma.
What they need to do, if they’re serious about sparkling wine, is to show disgorgement dates and the contributing vintages on the label. Meanwhile, this smells like brioche, most appealingly so.
The palate, also, has a new sense of maturity, as (perhaps) from a longer tirage. It’s lemony in the Riesling way, but the (so-called) “yeasty” flavors underscore the primary fruit and make the wine more stylish.
There’s a salty angularity and the dosage is appropriate (hallelujah!) and all in all this is more serious and ambitious than any previous disgorgement. It also has a lovely savory length. The raw material here is strikingly good, and the wine is better with each sip.
Way to go lads! In fact this is based on 2019, with three years of tirage, and it shows, and all we need now is for this info to appear on the label.
I just re-tasted it next to its Weissburgunder sibling. It has the “vertical” structure of Riesling, and thus more prominent angles and corners. It’s less bready also, and more sweet-citric and butter-pastry. In short it’s further from Champagne yet also a soul-brother of the really fervent terroir-soaked Blanc de Blancs, like a fine Coteaux Sud from one of that sub-regions heroes. It’s also better from the original Juhlin, where its vinous minerality is more prominent.
THE KINKY “AROMATIC” VARIETIES
Among the greatest wines of their kind – of any kind – on earth. Often!
2023 M-C Scheurebe +
Scheurebe can’t be made in some years. Other times it is inexpressive. When it works it can work in varying ways. You probably know this. Scheu has its pink grapefruit face, its sagey face, its cassis face, its passion fruit face, and sometimes it tilts earthy and sometimes flowery, and sometimes both.
This “basic” wine has a sensational fragrance. It’s like an oracle or a lama of Scheu. Curiously it is less overt from the Jancis, from which you could plausibly call it “subtle.”
The wine hits the palate like multi-colored sparklers, with spice, energy, and minerality (not common with Scheu), and for those moments it is truly thrilling. But just when the party’s at its most clamorous and giddy, it turns out the lights and shoos everyone out. It can’t, alas, escape the mordant snap at the end if so many ‘23s. But a quick second before doing so, it addresses the sage-profile of the variety, and my guess is it will drink better than it “shows.”
As I sit with it, two things happen. One, it grows more deliberate and less spiky from the Jancis, and two, it obtains a vivid aroma of wild fennel powder (which you can obtain from Curio Spice in North Cambridge, MA). Even with all my (temporary?) caveats, this little wine displays my beloved Scheu at an apex of detail and refinement – Scheu at its most pixilated.
2023 Haardt Scheurebe
The village wine. It’s a riot of fragrance, this time adding a whisper of smoked paprika to the panoply of Scheu be-bop.
The wine is stern on the palate, with peppery snap and mineral extract; an insistently serious wine, and a markedly dry one. At first it feels like its ample dramas are played above the surface of “palate,” and the inner, tertiary and umami-driven elements are rather vaporous. Outdoors (on a breezy 48º day full of sunlight) it finds a saltiness that mitigates its determined dryness.
If this wine’s gonna work, and I think it will at some point, it will depend on a swell of mid-palate salts and dusts and mineral to carry it. At first glance it’s a near-miss, but let’s watch what the days bring.
On second glance – having made a makeshift “feinherb” blend in the meantime – it keeps being (too) insistently dry, like a drunk who repeats the same thing as if you’ll agree the thirteenth time he says it. To give it its due, it gives no quarter in varietal expression – and I dote on this variety – but it is simply too dour to offer sensual gratification even to me – and I have a slobbery crush on it.
The saltiness does move a weensy bit forward at the end, strict though it remains. Sadly, my blend is outstanding.
2023 Mandelring Scheurebe
The 1er Cru (Erste Lage) sits in a tall heavy-ish bottle. I always wonder at the symbolism. Are you going to buy it in a shop because of the big solemn bottle? If you bring it out for your friends will they think “Ah, he’s serving us the good stuff?” Otherwise these proud lumps of glass, redolent of such lofty Significance, seem terribly silly and beside the point. After all, the WINE doesn’t give a rat’s ass what bottle you put it in. Forgetting the environmental damage such things do, shouldn’t WE outgrow this silliness? I mean we consumers? But enough carping; there’s Scheurebe to be honored….
It’s a powerful and powerfully interior wine; again strict and not only “dry” but D-R-Y, to make sure you get the point. It is also tooth-enamel “expressive,” let’s say, and yet it also shows its typical unity of grape and vineyard and gives a stunning sort of Scheu I only wish were nicer.
This is a purist’s cellar, and if I were to say to Martin Franzen “You know, these two Scheus would have been better with a smidge of RS,” he would observe, “Possibly, but we don’t do that here.” He would probably counsel patience, observing that fruit follows structure, and if the gestalt is in place then fruit will follow and the wine will taste less severe and more cordial. Having known his wines for 22 years, I am agnostic leaning toward agreeing, but not quite there.
Obviously I am fully aware of the superb material this wine contains. It would be easy to describe it. But I’m reminded of the old days, maybe 20-some years ago, when I tasted a slew of German wines that were egregiously dry, that cravedresidual sugar, and that struck me as a dreadful waste of such high-potential material.
But that’s ’23. When it’s good it’s often great, and when it doesn’t work it is really misguided. I love this grape variety, and I have the utmost regard for the producer, and if I end up eating these words I’ll snarf them down humbly.
Tasting again, and not quite in full snarf. The basic interior of the wine, the terroir and dignity if you will, is there to be appreciated – and I do. But the setting is clumsily sour, needlessly so.
(But before I go, I must report that a makeshift blend I made with an available “dosage” did this wine a world of good in a feinherb type on the dry side, but balanced and beautiful. “My” wine is much better, but no one will ever know.)
2023 Haardt Muskateller ++
Can I be remotely objective about these, the greatest Muscats in existence?
The production is never large (not here, not anywhere) and in ’23 it’s confined to just one wine – but what a wine.
Where the Scheurebes stumbled, this wine soars. That is because, alongside its ludicrous detail and fastidious articulation of flavor, it is also juicy. It is certainly dry but not remotely shrill. It is, in effect, balanced, especially if you include textureamong the parameters of balance.
I like (dry) Muscat in all its guises (as long as you keep me away from the cheap-perfumey Ottonel); I’m okay when it’s catty, I love when it’s absurdly grapey, I go nuts when it’s ripe enough to show elderflower, and here….here, I am simply in awe with the crystalline texture and glassy stillness and the basil-like flavors and – in this instance – the tease of elderflower that’s saying “Wait, wait, I’m just putting my shoes on…” before it rushes to join you.
Put it this way; if I ever get to taste Romanée-Conti I’ll be perfectly willing to – as the saying goes – drink it on bended knee with my hat in my hands. But I’ll also do it now, here, with this magnificent little explosion of loveliness, the likes of which I have scarcely tasted elsewhere.
2022 Bürgergarten Muskateller ++
A unicorn-wine – I think it’s only been made two or three times. For all of i manifold virtues, it is a shy yielder, and to make a single-site wine requires a generous harvest.
I am blasted into orbit by this wine; thus it seems churlish to kvetch yet again about the STUPID HEAVY BOTTLE – yet I must.
This is like a spawn of Muscat with the Breumel Riesling GG; it has that wine’s rich earth-and-stone solidity along with its para-fruit complexity. It is in effect a Cru that happens to have been made with Muscat, and which shows the Cru regardless. This gives rise to all kinds of speculations on the nature of a Cru and whether it requires a given variety to “show” itself.
In this case the answer is no, but the next question is – what about ten years from now?
I don’t know whether this was made available in the U.S. but, really, wherever you may be in the world, my advice is to lunge at this wine and score all you can of it. Will it be hedonic? That depends!
What you will get above the zealous minerality is a thing that isn’t really “fruit” as we normally perceive it. It isn’t really grapey (which is the thing they lob at Muscat; “It’s just grapey, what’s the big deal?”) but it seems to refer to every single leaf in the mint family (especially tarragon and lemon grass) along with ginger and shisho and even rhubarb, and everything sung with all the wild abandon of a well-trained voice.
It has the sober magnificence of that which isn’t easy. Yet it is far from inscrutable. Just an amazing wine….
AN INTERLUDE
2023 M-C Spätburgunder Rosé
I’ve always liked and admired this wine, and I do again here. Given the amazingly original character of the estate’s Pinot Noir, it stands to reason the bleed-off would also be interesting – and it is.
We don’t need a lot of words now. The texture is silky and articulate, the flavors run to rhubarb and brassicas (the implied greenness of so many ‘23s) and the whole thing is admirable in its fidelity to the estate’s basic philosophy. There’s loads of sources for gushy-poo rosés, but that’s not their style.
MIT SUESSE
2023 Gimmeldingen Riesling Kabinett
It’s a fine Kabi, and very hard to taste after the super-dry wines without anything to transition ones palate. I doubt this is very sweet – it has 9% alc – but after the Trockens it lands like a bomb of sweetness.
Still, there the sand-driven angularity of Gimmeldingen and the peach and guava flavors one sometimes finds in Pfalz Rieslings. Interestingly there is also none of the finishing bite of so many ‘23s.
As the palate adjusts to the radical change of dialect, the wine reveals itself more directly. It’s not one of those racy Kabinetts – the finish is on the sweet side - but there’s an herbal underpinning along lines of wintergreen and balsam, that leads into a sweet Riesling that isn’t soft, but pliant.
2023 Bürgergarten Riesling Spätlese +
This has a wonderful aroma, the kind that says This is why there is Spätlese.”
I found this also among the ‘22s – the sense that the “sweeter” wine had more verve and energy than the Kabinett, making it feel less (strictly) sweet, more of-a-piece.
It has the site-signatures of cheery and plum blossom and the underlying smokiness, and the palate feels more buoyant. Where the Kabi drifts, the Spätlese dances. Such a wine is justified by its energy and by a sense of abidingly underlying dryness that keeps it from feeling sugary.