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

again,” he’ll write. “But spare a thought for the waste
and devastation that walked the land in those sorry
years; all the GREAT, RIPE VINTAGES which might have
given legendary wines we would still be enjoying,
instead of the twisted perversions which now, with historical
perspective, we can justly deride.”
All too plausible, eh? This much I think is true;
notwithstanding the occasional successes amongst the
dry wines (and the frequent successes among
Halbtrockens), if all German wine were made dry then I
doubt if much of it would ever have left Germany. Winepeople
would visit and come back saying “Really pretty
scenery, nice people, great food . . . too bad about the
wines.” In the early days I wanted to make a case for
Trocken wines, because they could be good (at times!)
and I felt you should see German wine in all its facets.
They can still be good, yet what drives my fury into the
red zone is that this culture drinks concepts and trendyness
instead of sensually enjoying wine because of HOW
IT TASTES.
Peter Geiben told me a revealing story. He was visited
by a trio of consumers who wanted to taste and purchase.
What did they wish to taste? Trocken, of course.
And so a line up of dry wines was duly assembled, along
with a single “feinherb” and a “sweet” Kabinett at the
end. “It’s necessary you taste all the wines,” said Peter;
“those are the rules!” And when all the wines were tasted,
the buyers said “Actually, those last two wines were
quite attractive . . .” and when the order arrived the next
day, “Not one single bottle of Trocken wine was ordered; only
the sweet Kabinett.”
So what? So this: such things occur very rarely in
modern wine-Germany, where people seem to have lost
Trendy Trocken wines drinkers — too often concerned about
image rather than “taste.”
any sensual connection they may have had with what
actually gives them pleasure. A journalist in Germany
asked me whether I thought Trocken wine lovers were
“wrong” in their tastes. A fascinating question. A useless
question! I suspect something even more sinister is at
work. The German riesling grower is such a captive of
the prevailing dogma he has started to identify with his
captor. This may also be true of the market at large; people
adapt, make the best of things, go along to get along.
Many are the growers who have lamented to me they
can’t even get their customers to taste their “sweet”
wines. The Trocken Stasi may be peering at you from
behind the wall. The monolithic quality of this ideology
suggests not that tastes are “wrong” but rather they are
dishonest.
Remember any little feature of fashion from the last
ten years. Doesn’t matter which one. While it was trendy
we had to have it, and thought it looked good, and we
looked good in it. A few years later when the new trend
came along we adopted it. All well and good. But admit
it: you look in the closet at the old stuff, whatever it is,
wide lapels, four-button blazers, hip-huggers or bell-bottoms
or flowered neckties, and you think That looks
ridiculous; what was I thinking! Fashion exerts a kind of
hypnosis, and if this is true of fashion imagine how true
it is of dogma. “Wrong?” I think not. Misled, and therefore
dishonest with themselves.
Often even the dogma is supported with dishonest
(or at least false) explanation. I am automatically suspicious
when a German starts in with the whole “traditional”
rap. As I see it, “tradition” is a moving target,
usually determined by the time you start from and how
far back you look.
Yes, most German wine was dry until the ‘50s, but
that is because the technology by which they could be
reliably be made sweet didn’t exist. And, every broker
knew the best casks were those containing wine with natural
residual sugar. And, the dry wines of those days
were usually aged in Fuders, not steel, and aged longer
before bottling, thus helping to round them. When
microfiltration and temperature control became available,
most producers opted to use these new technologies
to make sweeter wines. Thus “tradition” changed
when it COULD; changed, you might say, into a new or
re-defined “tradition.” 100 years from now it’s quite possible
SWEET wines will be seen as “traditional” and dry
wines as an aberration.
What I’d prefer to see is that we all stop struggling
over theory and simply use our sensual wits to produce
and consume the loveliest possible wine. This will, I
believe, lead to the celebration of riesling’s ability to
shine in a variety of styles, and it will apportion them
naturally and spontaneously. That’s my little pipe dream.
It’s recently been suggested (by a writer who ought
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