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

weingut hexamer nahe • meddersheim
What a reception these wines have received. Glad you like ‘em!
So last night I did a class for the Smithsonian lecture series on regional distinctions among
German Rieslings. You could have heard a pin drop, but nobody had one. I tried dropping a stapler,
but people were just annoyed. So we started with a trio of Mosels to get that benchmark in
place. Then we tasted two Nahe wines, the first of them Hexamer’s `04 Spätlese.
This was revelatory even to me. Harald’s wines have all the attack and snap one associates
with Mosel wine, so there was no surprise at first glance, but the mid-palate was suddenly flooded
with another kind of substance, something less direct and more allusive, more exotic. Nahe
wines always taste as though they were fined with bath-salts and jewels. Hexamer’s wines are a
vivid demonstration of the Nahe’s uniqueness, precisely
because they’re so steely and pristine.
His `05 vintage was curtailed by hail, but fortunately
for him (and for us) he’d bought a parcel in the Grand
Cru (and painfully named) Schlossböckelheimer In Den
Felsen from a Kreuznach estate selling off vineyards. The
site is virtually unknown except to Nahe-fiends; it’s small
(6 hectares altogether) and the soil is sandy-stony loam
over sandstone and conglomerates based on ryolith.
Most important, it’s the first time we’ve seen what
Hexamer can do aside from the particular context of his
Meddersheimers. This is keenly enticing, for when I consider
the many tired old growers making dull wines
from great sites in, say, Niederhausen, I yearn to see what
a guy like Hexamer could do. Now, we begin to glean it.
This arose as a tip from Dönnhoff. The same tip
appears to have been given to David Schildknecht, who
came back enthusiastic. Samples were procured, and tasted
over the winter, with great pleasure. (The man made
some of the most interesting wines from the rarelyenthralling
1999 vintage.) We squeezed in a visit to
Meddersheim, which believe me requires a detour. Harald
and Petra Hexamer are all the things one wants a young
vintner-family to be. But first let me back up a little.
Harold, Petra, and Fido Hexamer
•Vineyard area: 14.3 hectares
•Annual production: 7,600 cases
•Top sites: Meddersheimer Rheingrafenberg,
Schlossböckelheimer In den Felsen,
Sobernheimer Marbach
•Soil types: Quartz, red weathered sandstone
with high percentages of quarzite,
conglomerates and porphyry
•Grape varieties: 62% Riesling, 12% Weissburgunder
& Grauburgunder, 11% Spätburgunder,
3% Frühburgunder, 12% others
The melancholy fact is that fewer and fewer 20somethings
are opting to carry on their family’s wineries.
This isn’t entirely bad. The ones who do self-select;
they’re the real idealists, wine-lovers, and I also believe
they choose the life because of the example their parents
set. It stands to reason. If the family life growing up was
happy and successful, the child connects the career of a
vintner with good warm feelings.
But whatever my theoretical musings, Harald
Hexamer is about as dear as they come. I have a little
questionnaire I hand out to all my growers (the answers
from which are often quoted herein) and when Hexamer
sent his back he wrote “For some of these questions I
could have written a book in response.”
He has twelve hectares, and growing. Somewhere
between 55-58% is Riesling (“It keeps growing and I can’t
keep up with it”). as he obtains land given up for sale by
the ones who choose against a wine life. He aims to
become identified with a genuinely superb vineyard
which has an unfortunate name for non-Germans . . .
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NAHE WINES