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

2003
I doubt if I tasted more than a few the past several
weeks. In a sense growers didn’t need to show them — 2005
has most of the same virtues but with more grip and typicity
— and in another sense those estates with still-unsold
`03 Auslesen have given up the fight, at least for now. The
really smart ones will hold wine back and re-release them
as “library wines” in 2014, at which time we’ll suddenly
realize how we underrated this amazing vintage.
I paid a visit to a producer I hadn’t seen for years,
whom I used to represent but no longer do. It was a
catch-up-with-old-friends sort of visit but of course there
were a bunch of wines lined up to taste. Among them
2003s.
Tasting several typically outstanding wines of this
most remarkable vintage of my adult life, I mused “You
know, at least in my country this vintage was almost universally
misunderstood.” I was taken aback when my
friend stopped dead still, affixed me with a powerful
stare and declaimed “Thank you! Yes, it does my heart
good to hear those words . . . .”
OK, here’s the scoop. I have very few 2003s left to
sell, and thus no mercantile reason to make this claim. I
happen to believe it. 2003 is at its best a great vintage, a
monument of the German wine culture, and will in the
fullness of time become the stuff of legend. Of course
there are plain dull wines from ‘03. But think about it: if
you’ve ever been there and visited growers, and if you’re
lucky enough to be given a bottle from the sanctorum to
taste, what vintage is it? Very likely a ‘76, and if you’re
really inner-circle material, a ‘59.
Thirty years from now your kids will be given 2003s
to accord them just the same honor. Those who poohpoohed
this vintage, affected to despise it, or simply
ignored it are guilty of a supreme piece of short-sighted
foolishness.
I have a share of blame as well. For twenty years I
have inculcated a clientele who prize the ordinary
virtues of German Riesling; its lightness, brilliance, minerality
and subtlety. Then 2003 comes thumping down
the path and I want you guys to like it too, though it sort
of flies in the face of everything I’ve been telling you. But
the thing is, it really doesn’t. The many great `03s are
more explicit than usual, and certainly fuller-bodied, but
neither of these facets precludes greatness unless our definition
of greatness is very fussy indeed.
German Riesling is always musical. Often (perhaps
usually) it’s like chamber music, pensive, intricate, manylayered
and compelling of attention. In 2003 it was music
of the very same composer, only this time symphonic,
even anthemic. Look, I’m a baseball purist; I like a pitcher’s
duel and I don’t require a lot of “action” to stay into
the game. But I also love a slugfest. Provided the thing is
essentially fine, I get to choose which way it’s fine. And I
think 2003 was a beneficence the likes of which we are
seldom given. I am quite sure that some of you weren’t
yet born in 1976. We ignore these monument-vintages at
our peril.
The only “problem” with 2003 (the good ones, I
mean) is it produced a plethora of the kind of wines we
don’t drink much of—Auslese and TBAs.
This is a modern “problem” brought on as an ironic
unplanned consequence of a huge improvement in
overall quality. And perhaps climate-change as well.
Think back to the ‘70s and ‘80s: three Auslese-vintages
in the ‘70s (‘71,’75,’76), four in the ‘80s (‘83, ‘88, ‘89,
and maybe ‘85), but in the ‘90s? ALL of them. And in
the new century? ALL of them. The new generation of
growers are picking better grapes and riper grapes
than ever before, and this is, we all agree, a good thing.
Except we don’t want to drink the results!
2002
It took awhile, but this vintage has started evolving
its true fruit, and it now breathes a soul-satisfying lyric
fragrance; it is more than “dear and winsome” as I wrote
last year. It has certain things in common with 2004,
though even now some ‘02s still show rather spiky acids
while the ‘04s are more balanced and juicy. Still, good
2002s are extremely attractive now; I found myself
yearning to be British, since that market tends to appreciate
bottle-aged wines more than ours does. Much as I
always liked ‘02, I suspect I may have underrated it.
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