German Catalog 2006 USE THIS ONE.qxp - Michael Skurnik Wines

NAHE WINES
104
helmut mathern nahe • niederhausen
Gloria Mathern soldiers on, gamely keeping the winery alive until . . . when? One hopes one of
the kids will want to take it over. But regardless, I feel this estate is being continued in tribute to
Helmut Mathern’s legacy.
The wonderful and talented Sabine tends the vineyards and makes the wines. She’s been
there nearly four years now, and I wondered if the wines were slowly morphing into hers. I
loved the look she gave me, as if to say “Well yes, that would be the question!” Yet her actual
answer was sensible. “The vineyards haven’t changed,” she said, “And the cellar hasn’t changed.
I’m sure there might be several very small shifts but nothing of a fundamental nature. How
could there be?”
These wines always tasted as if incense were burned in
the cellar. They still do.
Helmut Mathern, you may remember, died in
November 2002 from melanoma. I gather the winery’s
base of private customers remain loyal. Most of them
knew Mathern. In Germany a winery’s private customers
like to visit as often as possible, and they become less a
client-base than an extended family. It is almost unbearably
touching to think of them rallying around the
widow.
Mathern was always loyal to his private customers.
As his fame grew, he deliberately abstained from cultivating
the trade at large and resisted efforts to recruit
him into the VDP.
I never sold as much wine as I’d have liked. This was
in part because they often showed sulfury in their first
year, just when you tasted them. Those big DI tastings are
a necessary evil, but you can’t confuse their skim-the-surface
nature with a true evaluation. Mathern’s wines exemplified
what we mean by “racy”, in all its forms; high-
•Vineyard area: 10 hectares
•Annual production: 6,000 cases
•Top sites: Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle,
Kertz , Rosenberg, and Norheimer Dellchen
•Soil types: Grey and red slate, porphyry
•Grape varieties: 65% Riesling, 12% Müller--
Thurgau, 10% Weissburgunder,
10% Dornfelder, 3% Würzer
strung, urgent, bewitching, keen, vamping and erotic.
He had time to complete his new cellar, more spacious,
and all stainless-steel. He left the vineyards in good
condition. Best among these is an old parcel (48 years
now) in the ROSENBERG. Helmut’s wines were always
firm and zippy, rather like Saar wines, piquantly spicy. I
wonder if, when and how they will change under
Sabine’s knowing hands. I do believe there is some ethereal
print of Helmut among his vines; he spent many a
contented and watchful hour with them. Sabine will
breathe that ether for a while. But not forever. Even if she
wants to, even if she tries to maintain the “style” of
Helmut’s wines for the private clients, eventually she will
merge with his aura and subsume it, and they will be her
vineyards, responding to her as she does to them.