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

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View of the Mosel.
human care and enterprise. These vintners don’t seek to
reinvent Wine. It is enough that the beauty of wine
renews, always, that every year threads its way into a
great story. It nourishes us to take such wines into our
bodies, because by doing so we are connected to the deliberate
rythyms of the world, and to our human place in it.
These ideas have started to become my schtick;
they’ve crystalized out of my experience over the years into
something that looks like a contribution I can make. Thus
I write and talk about them. If you actually read this catalog
(you have my sympathies) you might imagine I think
about these things a lot, but the truth is I hardly think of
them at all. I do if I have to, and I have to now. In my daily
life I think mostly about baseball, sex and guitar solos. So,
when I all-of-a-sudden am blindsided by an incandescent
example of everything I think is important about wine, it
wipes me out. And thus, I sat weeping in front of eleven of
my customers and tried not to let them see.
Charles Simic once defined poetry as “three mismatched
shoes at the entrance of a dark alley” (thanks to
Molly McQuade for the quote). The basic enigma that
changes the lens by which we receive the world. The
more I get into wine the less reducible I feel it to be. Its
enigma deepens even as it appears to grow more transparent.
It is helpful to see wine connected to gardening,
to making things grow, and it’s even more helpful when
the person encouraging the growing is companionably
connected to the earth; most of all, when he sees the thing
through to completion. Which, in wine, means to produce
and to bottle it.
It’s different when you go there; all wine is.
Otherwise it’s just a bottle and a label (and a flavor you
can quantify if you’re into such perversions), disconnected
from its taproot. I try and have my gang with me as
much as schedules allow, because they need to be there
too, not to sell more, but to better know what they’re selling.
One of the loveliest things about artisanal wines is the
imbuing of the grower’s spirit. This isn’t literal; a slim shy
guy doesn’t necessarily make slim shy wines. But something
of him gets into those wines ineluctably; it can’t be
helped. It’s why you suddenly “get” the wines only when
you meet the (wo)man, sit with him, look at the things he
looks at every day, dip your feet into his vineyards, listen
to the local birds.
None of this is valuable if the wines don’t taste good.
Josh Greene’s interview with me for WINE & SPIRITS
suggested that superb quality was a secondary consideration
for me, but the truth is I barely consider it at all: It’s
a given. There is a “professional” intelligence that seeks
to guarantee every wine tastes good every time. But after
all these years I want you to know who you’re buying
these wines from. And what it all means.
There’s an old story about a man who approached
three bricklayers. Asking what they were up to, the first
replied “Isn’t it obvious? I’m laying these damn bricks.”
The second fellow was less truculent. “I’m making a
wall,” he said. The third guy seemed nearly beatific.
“What am I doing? I’m helping to make a cathedral.”
I know by now that I’ll assemble an excellent group
of wines. People will like them, they’ll perform, they’ll
get you laid, all that. I like selling wine too. It’s pleasant
to contribute to the material prosperity of good growers.
But when my son asks me to explain what I do, it can
seem paltry. I’m just another schlub sellin’ stuff. Just laying
bricks.
But I know better. By telling you how meaningful
and lovely this culture is, I’m doing my weensy part to
keep it alive. My real job is to nurture this and pass it on
intact. This was good. People made this, and it was good.
Thus I speak my truth.
We who care about wine often circle that thing we
see as True, each in our way. Karen MacNeil wrote these
lovely words:
“So what is it about wine?”
Perhaps it is this: wine is one of the last true things.
In a world mechanized to madness, a world where you
can’t do anything without somebody’s cell phone clanging
in your ear, a world where you can wake up to 67
innocuous emails all of which exude infuriatingly false
urgency—in this world of ours, wine remains utterly simple.
Pure. Unrushed. Archetypal. The silent music of
nature. For seven thousand consecutive years, vines
clutching the earth have happily thrust themselves
upward toward the sun and given us juicy berries, and
ultimately wine. And so it is that wine ineluctably connects
us to that earth. We don’t have to do anything. We
drink . . . and the bond is miraculously there.”
When I received her letter I wrote her back, saying,
in part:
Your words are true and lovely. I only ask that we