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

if the rocks were literally pulverized, and the powder
strained through the wine. The very finest pass beyond
the mere sense of stone into flavors mysterious enough to
compel thoughts of jewels. Minerality, I would argue, is a
higher form of complexity than fruit, because it doesn’t
yield to literal associations. It compels the imagination
(dare I say the soul?) to ignite. And it will not answer
your questions. Search for “fruit” and you’ll find it eventually:
some combination of apples and pears and melons
and limes and there they all are. But search for the
detail in mineral and you grope fruitlessly. This makes
me happy, and it’s not as paradoxical as you might suppose.
An answered question halts the process of thinking,
but an unanswered question leaves wonder awake, and
this is why I prize minerality highest among wine’s
virtues. Because these wines pose beautiful mysteries,
thoughts of which alert us to the gravity and loveliness
and ambiguities of the world.
But I digress. We were making the case for
German wines, and here’s a way I once made it. I once
told a woman at a tasting, when she asked if I had any
Chardonnays, that all my wines were Chardonnays.
“Then give me your best one,” she asked, and I think I
poured her a Lingenfelder. “Oh this is wonderful!”
she enthused. “I think this is the best Chardonnay I’ve
ever tasted.” That’s because it comes from the town of
RIESLING, I said, showing her the word on Rainer’s
label. If you want really good Chardonnay, I continued,
make sure it comes from Riesling. “Thank you,”
she said. “You’ve really taught me something.” Little
did she know.
The paradigm for German wine is pure fruit flavors,
faithfulness to the soil, and balance of all structural components
so that neither sweetness nor acidity stands out.
Most modern well-made German Riesling with residual
sugar tastes DRIER than most new-world Chardonnay.
And in place of the wash of slutty oak you get specifically
focused flavors that can be hauntingly complex.
“The wines are too sweet.” This is just not true. I’ve
poured bone-dry, I mean dry as dust Trocken wines for
tasters who complained at their sweetness because they
had seen the shape of the bottle and the words on the
label and their brains were flashing the SWEETNESS UP
AHEAD sign. The very same wine, decanted into a burgundy
bottle and served alongside, met with approval.
“Ah that’s better: nice and dry.”
What people think they taste and what they actually
taste are sometimes divergent. What they say they like
and what they actually like are often divergent! Nothing
new here. Apart from which, it’s really tedious to be on
the defensive regarding sweetness. Somebody please tell me
what’s supposed to be WRONG with sweetness? When did it
become infra-dig? We SNARF down sweetness in every
other form, why not in wine? It’s in most of the food we
eat. What do you think would happen if we turned the
tables; put them on the defensive for rejecting sweetness?!
“Who told you it wasn’t cool to drink wines with sweetness?”
we could ask. “Man, that idea went out with double-knit
leisure suits.”
Quick-cut to June 2003, at the Aspen Food & Wine
Classic. I’m standing behind my table when an incandescently
radiant young blonde approaches, boyfriend in
tow. Said boyfriend is buff and tanned, a manly man.
Woman has spied a bottle of dessert-wine from Heidi
Schröck in its clear bottle and inviting gold. May she
taste it yes she may. I pour. And you, sir, I ask: some for
you? “No,” he says, “I don’t like dessert wine.”
If you like dessert (and who doesn’t?), you like dessert wines!
Fair enough, I think, chacun a son gout and all that.
But something gnaws at me, and I finally have to ask:
“Do you like dessert?”
“Excuse me?”
“Dessert,” I say, “Do you eat dessert after a meal?”
“Sure,” he says, “Yeah, I eat dessert.”
“So you’ll consume sweetness in solid form but not
liquid form?”
“Well, I . . .”
“ . . . or you’ll consume it in liquid form but not
when it contains alcohol?” I press.
“Well I never thought of it that way,” he says.
“Well?” I insist.
“Oh all right, let me taste the wine,” he says peevishly,
with woman looking keenly on.
We want our tomatoes ripe, so why not also our wines?
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