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

heinhessen wines
A few of you may recall my saying, some seventeen years ago, that the Pfalz was the region to
watch; it was creative, hyper-oxygenated and full of vitality—and so it was. And the press took
notice, and the Pfalz was and remains established as an attractive and important wine region.
But there’s a settled-ness in the Pfalz now, and this was inevitable. Eventually the up-and-coming
being finally ups-and-comes. And there’s a clear and present danger the Pfalz will be suffocated
by the ideologies of its movers and shakers, if this hasn’t already happened. Am I overstating?
Try and find a single Riesling Kabinett with residual sugar on any significant restaurant in the
region! You needn’t bother: you can’t do it. The fetish for dry wine has cast a pall over the land.
But all is not lost. In fact the spirit of inquiry still lives. The sense of community still lives. The
heady feeling of youthful energy and idealism still lives. The sense of a region awakening still lives.
Only one thing has changed—it has migrated a few miles northward, to the RHEINHESSEN.
At this very moment Rheinhessen is Germany’s most
interesting wine region. And this is entirely due to its
people, because its terroirs remain unremarkable. Indeed
one laments the cruel irony; if only these young lions had
grown up in the Rheingau. But we take passion where we
can find it, and we’re finding it here.
And it isn’t only happening along the Rheinfront by
Nierstein. Last year at Gysler I noticed a poster for a tasting
featuring growers in a group called Message In A
Bottle. Any group to which Alex Gysler belonged was
ipso facto intriguing, and I asked Alex whether any of his
colleagues might be interesting to me. You’ll see the
results of his answer a few pages hence. Perhaps these
guys were inspired by the acclaim attaching to Wittmann
and Keller, who are making stellar wines from vineyards
no one heard of ten years ago.
Sure the Rheinhessen remains home to a great deal
of dross (Liebfraumilch has to come from somewhere, I
guess) but there’s no equivalent buzz in the Rheingau,
where mediocre wine from great land remains the status
quo. Indeed the Rheinhessen seems to invert that
melancholy formula, making excellent wine from
(ostensibly) nondescript land. You don’t drive around
thinking “Well it’s obvious that great wines come from
here.” Instead its landscape is lullingly formless; without
rhetoric, rolling and buckling its gentle pointless
way. I like it in every kind of weather, sometimes hazy
and secretive and other times clear and full of vista. An
early Spring morning when the first smoky haze hasn’t
quite burnt off—that’s how I remember it best, dreamy
and indistinct, the plain little villages emerging
vaporously from the mist.
You need a really unassailable idealism to worry and
strain out a living in the Rheinhessen. It’s romantic in a
grand, quixotic way to work the steep slopes, but the flat-
tish, rich-soiled Rheinhessen is another matter. It may be
possible that great wines just could be written into some
of this land, if you’re unwilling to assume they aren’t,
and willing to stake it all on your idealism. And, I’d have
Rheinhessen is still a buyer’s market,
happy for us in the short term, if the
growers can survive.
to add, willing to sell your wine for something less than
it’s worth. It helps that much of the vineyard work can be
done by machine, but it helps even more that these young
people no longer feel alone; they are part of an informal
fraternity working for a common good.
The results for us are entirely desirable: We can
obtain beautiful wines for very gentle prices. I only
added a single new estate to the portfolio this year, and
it came from Rheinhessen.
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