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

GKR-090 2005 Kallstadter Steinacker Riesling Kabinett Halbtrocken
This tasted drier than a Trocken estate-Riesling we’d just tasted — sweetness doesn’t
always register as sweet, does it! The wine is really stony and gingery; it has the roasted-beet
note of the Höllberg from Wagner-Stempel; an old-school dry stony Riesling
with lots of torque and power. Lavishly dry, you might say. Oh go on, say it.
SOS: 0 (3-12 years)
GKR-091 2005 Kallstadter Steinacker Riesling Kabinett
CORE-LIST WINE. Now more red beet and cinammon, and less pure stone; soy and
honey-mushroom aromas; thickly dense and tannic; barely off-dry; it finds a talc-y jasmine-y
mineral as it finishes. Remarkable.
SOMMELIER ALERT! SOS: 1 (5-18 years)
GKR-092 2005 Kallstadter Saumagen Riesling Spätlese Halbtrocken ++
I confess I expected nothing like this. I’d wondered whether Bernd’s big wines would collapse
under their botrytis, but this has a seductive creaminess like I’ve never seen: it
smells exactly like Mesnil, in fact: apple-blossom, jasmine, chalk, honeysuckle; the palate
is a creamsicle of terroir, a masterly weaving of mineral, sweet lees and endless wintergreeny
length. There is no other Riesling like it, and EVERY order should include it.
SOMMELIER ALERT! SOS: 1 (now-4 years, again 13-18 years)
GKR-087 2004 Kallstadter Saumagen Riesling Spätlese ++
There’s a very fine `05 in the wings but this wine is so good I want to sell it out first.
This takes the palate past the speed-of-taste; I’ve never seen such a crazed interplay of
elements; all of the above plus salts and mineral and wild-plums, with glass-clear
vivid splishy lift. Without sacrificing his house-style, these `04s take it places it has
never gone.
SOS: 2 (between seven and twenty-five years)
SOMMELIER ALERT!
GKR-093 2004 Kallstadter Saumagen Scheurebe BA +
GKR-093H 2004 Kallstadter Saumagen Scheurebe BA, 12/375ml
A Philippi wine to the very marrow; fiercely spicy and brash; where anyone else’s BA
would be sweet this is pupil-shrinkingly minty, a wasabi-Scheu; crazed ginger and
lime, phosphorescent brilliance; I mean we’re talking babbling-loony wine here folks!
SOS: 3 (now- 13 years)
175
PFALZ WINES