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

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PFALZ WINES 178 GDR-143 2005 Dürkheimer Steinberg Muskateller Kabinett Trocken + A TRIUMPH of the `05 vintage chez Darting: an arrestingly pretty fragrance; palate is crystalline, dense, bright and long ; it’s on the lime and herbal side of the variety but with the glorious `05 crushed-rock chewy mineral density. I tasted this AFTER the TBA and it just rang out with beauty and grace. SOS: 0 (now - 5 years) GDR-140 2005 Dürkheimer Nonnengarten Rieslaner Auslese ++ You need two mouths to taste this wine; it’s too huge to fit into one. I checked carefully for V.A. (a sometimes-issue with `05 Rieslaners) and found none. Cherry and toasted brioche; gigantic, implacable mass and force; cashing cymbals of ginger and pepper and yet it rumbles like an 18-wheeler over the palate; the finish is like one of those wild skies dotted with angry clouds but sunny with crepuscular beams. Oh man, Rieslaner! SOS: 3 (3-16 years) GDR-130 2004 Ungsteiner Honigsäckel Scheurebe Auslese 122° Oechsle. “We waited, and waited, and waited, and then we had a night at minus- 4 (about 25 Fahrenheit) and said let’s grab it in.” The wine is massive and not—or not yet—especially varietal; lavender and purple iris aromas; billowing spicy power, smoky and fiendish and smoldering: a lot of juju for the money. SOS: 3 (now - 12 years) GDR-132H 2004 Ungsteiner Bettelhaus Rieslaner BA, 12/500ml Very early days yet for this still-yeasty cask sample, so none of my pinpoint-accurate nailing of each minute scintilla of nuance, but it’s clear this will show typical complexity and authority and power. SOS: 4 (between thirteen and twenty-eight years) GDR-141H 2005 Huxelrebe TBA, 12/375ml Still cloudy and not-yet-wine when I tasted it, but excellent potential. SOS: 4 (12-28 years) GDR-142 2004 Pinot Noir This is quite a triumph in its understated way; a lovely “light” Pinot Noir that’s very much old-world; sweet aromas like a Santenay; soy, shiitake, spice-box; palate is surprisingly positive and long; oak (all local and new-ish) is present but well behaved, and the wine really compounds, seeming to expand and flex its muscles. I’m hugely impressed by this elegant pure Pinot.
As a junior in high school I took honors-English. Figures, right? I must admit I had no great love of reading; I rather had great love for the young woman who taught honors English, Jane Stepanski. Every year I realize how much Jane forgave us, and every year it seems like more. I wasn’t actually a nerd; I was a freak exactly two years before everyone else was. It was painfully solitary for awhile, and I craved a pack, any pack, and honors English helped satisfy the craving. Oh I read some, but mostly I was earnest and clueless. I recall a time when my classmates were especially derisive at what they called “truth-and-beauty poems.” I went along with the prevailing contempt; truth-and-beauty poems: pfui! Only ignorant clods liked those. What kinds of poems did I like? Um, er, ah . . . well—ahem—um, y’know, all kinds of poems as long as they are not truth-and-beauty poems. It might appear as though I look back on all this with disdain. Far from it. I see it as pitiable; we were so needy, we hungered for any scrap of certainty, any piece of solid floor we could stand on. And so we struck our fatuous attitudes and somehow Jane Stepanski didn’t spit at us. I got into wine as a man of twenty five. I was like every fledgling wine geek; it consumed me every hour of the day. Alas it also consumed anyone in my proximity for a couple years, for I was as great a wine-bore as has ever trod the earth. But I was greedy for knowledge, or rather for information, and I did as every young person does: I sought to subdue the subject by accumulating mastery over it. Ignorance was frustrating, and uncertainty was actively painful. And lo, there came a day when I felt I had at least as many answers as I had questions. I started, mercifully, to relax. I was amazingly lucky to get my basic wine education in Europe, where I lived the first five years of my drinking life. It gave me a solid grounding in the “Classics” of the wine world. I still believe it does the novice nothing but good to drink somewhat aloof, cool wines to start. (S)he is thus encouraged to approach a wine, to engage it, to have a kinetic relationship with it. This is substantially less possible (If not outright impossible) with most new-world wines, which want to do all the work for you, which shove you prone onto the sofa saying “You just watch, and I’ll strut my stuff.” Eventually, I came to see wine as the mechanical rabbit that keeps the greyhounds running along the track. No matter how much “knowledge” I hoarded, the ultimate target was the same distance away—if not further. The “truth” of wine, it seemed, was a sliding floor . . . and even then you had to first gain access to the room. This frustrated my craving for certainty, for command, for mastery. And for a period of time I was angry at wine. Now I rather think wine was angry with me. But, as patiently as my old honors-English teacher, wine set about teaching me what it really wanted me to know. First I needed to accept that in wine, uncertainty was an immutable fact of life. “The farther one travels, the less A Little Essay About Nothing Much one knows.” There was no sense struggling against it; all this did was retard my progress toward contentment. But it is a human desire to know, to ask why. Would wine always frustrate that desire as a condition of our relationship? Far from it. But I was asking the wrong why. I was asking why couldn’t I know everything about wine? I needed to ask why I couldn’t, why none of us ever can. The essential uncertainty exists ineluctably, or so it seemed, and the most productive questions finally became clear. What purpose does this uncertainty serve? What does it want of me? One answer was immediately clear: there would be no “answer.” There would, however, be an endless stream of ever-more interesting questions. And questions, it began to seem, were indeed more interesting than answers. In fact it was answers which were truly frustrating, for each answer precluded further questions. Each answer quashed, for a moment, the curiosity on which I’d come to feed. It seemed, after all, to be questioning and wondering which kept my elan vital humming. The less I insisted on subduing wine, the more of a friend it wanted to be. Now that I know that wine is an introvert which likes its private life, I don’t have to seduce away its secrets with my desire to penetrate. The very uncertainty keeps it interesting, and wine has grown to be very fine company. I’m inclined to guess that the uncertainty wants to remind me to always be curious, always be alert to the world, always be grateful that things are so fascinating, and to remember to be grateful for the hunger. Because the hunger is life. Accepting the irreducible mystery of wine has enabled me to immerse myself in it more deeply than I ever could when I sought to tame it. Immersion has come to be the key. I am immersed in the world, the world is immersed in me. There are filaments and connections, always buzzing and always alive. The world is not a commodity destined for my use; its cells are my cells, its secrets are my secrets. And every once in a while, usually when I least expect it, wine draws its mouth to my ear and says things to me. Time is different than you think. A universe can live inside a spec of flavor. There are doors everywhere to millions of interlocking worlds. Passion is all around us always. The earth groans sweetly sometimes, and small tears emerge, and tell us everything. Beauty is always closer than it seems. When you peer through the doorway, all you see is desire. You hear these words and it all sounds like gibberish, a stream of sound which doesn’t amount to anything and only confuses things more. But if you’ve ever held a restive infant, there’s a little trick you can do. Babies like to be whispered to; it fascinates them. They get a far-away look on their little faces, as if angels had entered their bodies. And so I do not need to know what wine is saying to me; it is enough that it speaks at all, enough that it leaves me aware of meanings even if these don’t fall neatly into a schemata, enough how sweet it feels, the warm moist breath of beauty and secrets, so soft and so close to my ear. 179
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terry theise estate selections Impo
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ii “Within every effort there has
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iv contents Theise Manifesto . . .
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vi LET US WRITE YOUR ORDER FOR YOU!
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2 These things coincided with a dec
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4 View of the Mosel. human care and
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6 Continuing New Approach to Tastin
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8 Making the Case For German Wines
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10 I’m sure I didn’t convert th
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12 Principles of Selection in this
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14 Belgium, and they immediately ru
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16 Core-List Wines The core-list, w
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18 to know better) that the great d
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20 How I Approach Wine, or Let Wine
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22 time and lots of flavor. Due to
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24 SHORT-LIST FOR ROCKHEADS: Dr Dei
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26 “Antiques” 2001 has modestly
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28 Ah but this isn’t P.C., you se
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30 How German Wines Age To define a
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32 Label Basics German labels are s
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34 around until he gets fluent in t
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36 Plusses and The Quest For Perfec
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38 sommelier alert GSO-264 2005 Sel
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40 subject: why riesling? A) Becaus
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42 Treking up the Erdener Treppchen
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MOSEL WINES 44 Other Regionals from
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MOSEL WINES 46 could do was sit the
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MOSEL WINES 48 A Look At The Vineya
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MOSEL WINES 50 THE SPÄTLESEN GSO-2
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MOSEL WINES 52 SCHTICKIES! GSO-281
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MOSEL WINES 54 Erstwhile cellar-mas
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MOSEL WINES 56 it’s confusing. Me
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MOSEL WINES 58 alfred merkelbach mo
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MOSEL WINES 60 GME-135 2005 Ürzige
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MOSEL WINES 62 joh. jos. christoffe
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MOSEL WINES 64 GJC-146 2005 Erdener
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MOSEL WINES 66 Sleek, feminine, ele
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MOSEL WINES 68 he elects not to.
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MOSEL WINES 70 a.j. adam mosel •
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MOSEL WINES 72 changing; enterprisi
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MOSEL WINES 74 reuscher-haart mosel
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MOSEL WINES 76 hoffmann-simon •Vi
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MOSEL WINES 78 weingut ansgar clüs
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80 Does this self-evident truth rea
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MOSEL WINES 82 carl loewen mosel
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MOSEL WINES 84 carl schmitt-wagner
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MOSEL WINES 86 karlsmühle-geiben r
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88 Is all taste equally valid? Sure
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90 mittelrhein wines In 1900 there
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MITTELRHEIN WINES 92 Bacharach, but
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MITTELRHEIN WINES 94 jost at a glan
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96 nahe wines It is a joy to labor
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NAHE WINES 98 dönnhoff nahe • ob
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NAHE WINES 100 vintage happens befo
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NAHE WINES 102 GDH-172 2005 Estate
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NAHE WINES 104 helmut mathern nahe
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106 the matter of “globalization
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NAHE WINES 108 jakob schneider nahe
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NAHE WINES 110 GJS-067 2005 Niederh
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NAHE WINES 112 Meddersheimer Rheing
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NAHE WINES 114 kruger-rumpf nahe
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NAHE WINES 116 GKF-099 2005 Scheure
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NAHE WINES 118 viti-and-viniculture
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NAHE WINES 120 THE AMAZING TRIO OF
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RHEINHESSEN WINES 122 j.u.h.a. stru
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RHEINHESSEN WINES 124 started to wo
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RHEINHESSEN WINES 126 THE PATERBERG
Page 136 and 137: RHEINHESSEN WINES 128 wagner-stempe
Page 138 and 139: RHEINHESSEN WINES 130 GWG-016 2005
Page 140 and 141: RHEINHESSEN WINES 132 weingut oekon
Page 142 and 143: RHEINHESSEN WINES 134 gernot gysler
Page 144 and 145: RHEINHESSEN WINES 136 christian-wil
Page 146 and 147: 138 tasting versus drinking I once
Page 148 and 149: 140 rheingau wines Recently Jancis
Page 150 and 151: RHEINGAU WINES 142 josef leitz rhei
Page 152 and 153: RHEINGAU WINES 144 Rüdesheim Viney
Page 154 and 155: RHEINGAU WINES 146 On August 4th, 2
Page 156 and 157: RHEINGAU WINES 148 I did, and liked
Page 158 and 159: 150 why does place-specificity matt
Page 160 and 161: 152 pfalz wines In the pretty walle
Page 162 and 163: PFALZ WINES 154 müller-catoir pfal
Page 164 and 165: PFALZ WINES 156 THE NOT-DRY WINES!
Page 166 and 167: PFALZ WINES 158 josef biffar pfalz
Page 168 and 169: 160 scheurebe: what gives? Um, I ha
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Page 172 and 173: PFALZ WINES 164 eugen müller pfalz
Page 174 and 175: PFALZ WINES 166 GEM-080H 2005 Forst
Page 176 and 177: PFALZ WINES 168 Messmers use only o
Page 178 and 179: PFALZ WINES 170 theo minges pfalz
Page 180 and 181: PFALZ WINES 172 GTM-093 2005 Gleisw
Page 182 and 183: PFALZ WINES 174 Well, guess again.
Page 184 and 185: PFALZ WINES 176 kurt darting pfalz
Page 188: Back Cover Photo: Deer resting in t
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German Catalog 2006 USE THIS ONE.qxp - Michael Skurnik Wines

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