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

NAHE WINES
108
jakob schneider nahe • niederhausen
It could seem incongruous for this (or any) portfolio to present the likes of Dönnhoff and
Schneider cheek-by-jowl, one the arch-mage of polish and poetry, the other almost rustic by
comparison.
And yet it was Dönnhoff himself who urged me to stay with Schneider when I considered
dropping them a few years back. It is a superb, incomparable collection of vineyards, he said,
and a feet-on-the-ground relationship to them. And with the influx of the new generation, there’s
reason to expect fine things to happen. All of which is true — and persuasive. But there’s another
layer of truth which isn’t easy to get at.
We all know the difference between bad wine and good,
good wine and fine, fine wine and great. And we prize
the splendors of great wine, as we should. Yet I am wary
of the tendency to reach only for great wine. Anaïs Nin
warned: “Beware of the esoteric pleasures, as they will
blunt your appreciation of the normal ones.” And in the
Pfalz there’s a proverb: “There is nothing better than that
which is good,” and we all know the saying “The great is
the enemy of the good,” and it has to do with outgrowing
the insistence that only the best is good enough for moi.
And it has also to do with the circles in which one
wishes to move. Great growers everywhere form a kind
of fraternity, an in-crowd (in Germany this would be a
Brat-pack of the wurst kind) and we all want to hang
with the popular kids, but you know, after a point I don’t
care what parties I’m invited to. I do care, though, about
Mama-Schneider throwing her arms around me when I
arrived, and pressing upon me a bottle and a card to give
to my wife, and it is very good to represent all kinds of
wines from all kinds of people, as long as the people are
good and the wines are honest.
It’s seven years now since Papa Hans Schneider left
us. His son Jacob and grandson (whose name I shamefully
forget, and who looks about fourteen years old but
• Vineyard area: 16 hectares
• Annual production: 6,500 cases
• Top sites: Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle
Klamm & Felsensteyer, Norheimer Dellchen
& Kirschheck
• Soil types: Grey slate, porphyry , melaphyre;
52 different soil types
• Grape varieties: 90% Riesling, 10% Pinot
varieties
who’s in fact the heir-apparent) make the wines now.
Things are changing. Much more stainless steel in the cellar,
in emulation of contemporary idioms. One senses
they’re feeling their way, but certain of the wines showed
compelling promise. It is odd to think I am closer to
Papa’s age than to the age of this fresh-faced youth.
Odder still to see the winery crawl out from under its
particular rock. Personally I liked the rustic 19th-century
touch of a lot of the old wines. They didn’t make wines
like that anymore. And now, they don’t. But progress
lurches on in its blithe heedless rush.
It is indeed all changed. But Papa Hans still casts a
giant shadow. I met him in May 1978 when I made my
first-ever foray to the Rhineland. He’d have been in his
fifties then, more vigorous but every bit as cussed and
opinionated as he was to the end. When I visited just a
few weeks before his death, it turned out, he only greeted
me briefly before attending to a group of visitors in
the next room. Every now and again we’d hear him
through the wall, yammering away, worrying one of his
many pet themes, and his son and I made eye-contact
and exchanged knowing smiles.
This was a man made to talk. And not merely to converse,
but to address, to pontificate, to perorate. He