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

RHEINHESSEN WINES
122
j.u.h.a. strub
rheinhessen • nierstein
I called Walter Strub to tell him I’d be arriving for Hans Selbach’s funeral. I’d stop off in Nierstein
for tea and breakfast, drive on to the Mosel, and return in the evening to hang out.
A few days later, on the eve of my departure Walter called to say he’d drive me to the funeral.
I was so touched I could hardly bear it. First that he wanted to pay his own respects. Second
that he wanted to spare me the jet-lagged drive. Third that he created an occasion where we two
could be alone together to talk.
Walter is shy at full-frontal emotionality, so I have to say these things here, to you, knowing
he’ll read them on the couch some evening by himself, and not be embarrassed. This is a friend.
In the late Winter of 1983 I made one final trip to the
Rheinland to say goodbye to some close friends. I’d be
heading back to the States a few weeks later, after ten years
in Germany. One of those friends was Walter Strub, who
asked if I’d have some time to taste his young vintage 1982
with him. I agreed readily; I wasn’t in the wine trade then,
and had no experience tasting pre-bottled wine.
The samples were lined up when I arrived. Most of
the wines were bone-dry or nearly so, and the question
arose how sweet they should ultimately be. The Trocken
fetish was only incipient in those days. Well yours truly
had no earthly idea how sweet the wines should be; I’d
never looked at an analysis and had no idea how many
grams-per-liter of sweetness equaled what impression of
sweetness on the palate. Walter gave me an ‘81 to taste
and told me how sweet it was, and I tried using that wine
as a benchmark.
The work came easily to me—to my great surprisebut
this was another order of tasting, different in essence
from anything I’d tasted or drank as a “civilian.” It was
one thing to
have tasted
finished
wines analytically,
that was
recreation,
but this was
intuition,
inference,
imagination,peering
through
a periscope
into the
future, not
to mention the finished wine depended on making the
right choice now.
Even after doing it for twenty-plus years now, it’s
still hard to articulate what it entails. I’m afraid it’s very
Zen. You receive a wine which may or may not be incom-
•Vineyard area: 15 hectares
•Annual production: 7,500 cases
•Top sites: Niersteiner Orbel, Oelberg,
Hipping and Pettenthal
•Soil types: Red clay, slate, loess, loam & chalk
•Grape varieties: 80% Riesling, 13% Müller-
Thurgau, 3% Grüner Veltliner, 2%
Weissburgunder and Spätburgunder
plete (some of them are instantly perfect just as they are)
and you infer what it will take to complete them. In so
doing you are required to examine flavor components
under a palate-microscope. But it happens in a flash, it
takes longer to explain it than to do it, and it isn’t consciously
cognitive. You relax, so the wine can come to
you, and when it does you flash a beam of super-attention
on it. Then you judge and cogitate. And I think I’m
good at it, but still I am often wrong. I like being wrong.
Because if I’m wrong (i.e., if my initial guess doesn’t pan
out), I get to keep at it till I get it right, and I get to see my
error, and it’s the best way to learn.
I’ve learned a few things over the years. More sugar
doesn’t always taste sweeter. Often it’s the opposite.
What tastes perfect in the lab needs more sweetness at
bottling, because bottling constricts fruit and body and
emphasizes acidity, and because sugars begin to polymerize
immediately. If a wine’s a bit too sweet, time will
see to it. If it’s too dry, ain’t nuthin’ you can do.
Here’s why I’m going on about this in a text about
Walter Strub. Because of the many layers of trust he
showed me, out of the goodness of his heart. He invited
me behind the scenes, allowing me to see his wines au
naturel, and to taste as I’d never tasted before. And to my
astonishment, he took my ideas seriously. But that’s
Walter: no secrets, no artifice, full of the spirit of sharing.