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

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time and lots of flavor. Due to the rather dry year, we
experienced smaller sized berries and more loosely
packed bunches, particularly in the old vineyards. Rain
in the 2nd week of September spurred the first infections
of botrytis on the Mosel but not on a broad scale and
without any problems of gray rot or penicillium . In fact,
foliage and grapes remained astonishingly healthy well
into late September though single berries started developing
noble rot.
“Almost the entire harvest was done under blue
skies and very pleasant, if not too warm, temperatures.
We were glad we have the means to chill the juice since
the first days of the harvest saw rather warm grapes.
Days over 70° were frequent and on October 26th we still
had a record 77° during the day. Twice during the harvest
we barbecued
and ate outside
with the vineyard
crew, once at the
end of October
after a day of picking
BA and TBA (
those memories
stick!).
“By the letter
of the German
Wine Law all of
our grapes qualified
for QmP, only
two batches of
grapes were
Kabinett and
everything else
This face tells the story of the was Spätlese and
extraordinary vintage at Selbach-Oster.
higher, often
much higher.
It was possible to collect shrivelled, botrytised
berries from day-1 and, based on past experience, we
did. It was also easy to make clearly defined runs
through the vineyards for different grapes, with or without
botrytis and to easily differentiate even within the
botrytised grapes. And, yes, the later in October, better
even early November, the more and more beautiful the
botrytis.”
Johannes’ portrait of a glorious harvest was echoed by
nearly everyone along the Mosel, Mittelrhein and Nahe.
And what of the results?
As a rule 2005 is a vintage of generosity and power,
not musclebound, but fit, no flab. If you look at analyses
you might wonder whether acids were adequate, but you
wouldn’t if you simply tasted the wines. They are bigbodied
beings by German Riesling standards — though
far from corpulent — but much of their bodies are taken
up with a tactile mineral density and (sometimes) a phenolic
muscularity which stands in for acidity-as-such.
One or two people claimed `05 was “like a cross of `01
and `03” which makes a certain sense, though at best `05
is better than both earlier vintages. They are marked by a
wonderful solidity, as if you could just as easily eat as
drink them. Yet again, at their frequent best, their mass
does not preclude remarkable detail and intricacy.
MOSEL-SAAR-RUWER. With the Nahe this is the
star of 2005. Many were the growers who told me they
couldn’t remember a greater vintage, and in one instance
I agreed. Comparisons to the Great One of the modern
era — 1971 — were made even by those usually reticient.
Though I noted small variations (like those in hand-sewn
garments) among producers, the least among them
offered strikingly expressive, dense, one dares say majestic
wines, while the greatest of them (keep reading!)
offered the single greatest vintage I have ever tasted from
any grower anywhere, any time. The “typical” 2005
Mosel is a wine of staggering ripeness and concentration
yet still elegant and transparent. When botrytis occurs it
is miraculously clean and almost always integrated perfectly
within mineral and fruit. Even more delightful,
2005 doesn’t whomp the growers with its own character
so much as let them express their particular voices with a
text such as they have never spoken. Merkelbach,
Schaefer, Loewen, all of them are wonderfully themselves,
yet cooking with jet-fuel.
NAHE: Ditto! With no discernible variation between
a Hexamer on the upper Nahe and a Kruger-Rumpf on
the lower Nahe; it’s fabulous everywhere. If anything
Nahe seems even sleeker than Mosel in `05. Diel thinks
it’s the best vintage in his winery’s history. At Dönnhoff
all we could do was taste and laugh.
MITTELRHEIN: At times the wines flirt with overripeness,
such that Weingart had (even) better results
from his Fürstenberg than from the (warmer) Bopparder
Hamm. Jost’s wines were generous, gorgeously so at the
“Kabinett” level, less striking from Auslese on up.
Indeed, one is within one’s rights putting Kabinett in
quotes for every 2005 wine bearing its moniker. Don’t be
no such thing as no “Kabinett” in `05.
RHEINHESSEN: very good closer to the Rhine (Geil
and Strub) and extraordinary in the hilly hinterlands
near the Nahe (Wagner-Stempel, whose wines are essentially
Nahe in all but name anyway). Generous, fruitdriven
wines.
PFALZ: This is a true patchwork, You’ve heard the
oft-repeated
cliché “The next
village had rain
but not us” (variations
abound:
maybe the next
village didn’t get
the needed rain,
or it had an infestation
of toxic
spiders or whatever)
but everyone
in the Pfalz
seems to have
enjoyed some
crucial advantage
over the guy