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

26
“Antiques”
2001 has modestly shuffled off the stage now, and
one doesn’t get it to taste. Yet every time I did I was reaffirmed
in my certainty of its fundamental greatness.
2000 remains a kind of tragic watershed; tragic
because of the egregious effort that went into making it;
watershed because with this vintage we gleaned the
great Change. No such wines could have been made in
those conditions 30, 20, even 10 years ago. The best 2000s
are immensely worthwhile wines. I sat drinking Riesling
one afternoon with Laura and Jay from House & Garden,
and noted with pleasure how fine the 2001 Leistenberg
Kabinett from Dönnhoff was showing. “Um, Terry, the
label says 2000,” said Jay. Oh c’mon Jay; don’t distract my
flow of rhetoric with anything so mundane as the facts!
But this 2000 was indeed lovely, as many of them are.
But do drink them soon. They are fragile and they
won’t make old bones, most of them. Also, drink them up
when you open a bottle. This is not a vintage you can
keep for days in the fridge. They have high pH and are
subject to volatile acididy.
1999 is as good as forgotten, bland creature that it
was, yet again it’s often just these vintages that return to
amaze us in 20 years. Think of ‘86, ‘79, ‘73.
Something I enjoy is to pull an old bottle of a TT-
Selection from my cellar, and enjoy it like a “civilian,” like
in the old days before I was a professional swirl ‘n hurler.
I can’t remember them individually any more (a lifetime
of rock and roll and those days are gone, man) and I could
look them up in an old catalog, but I usually don’t. When
they’re singing, as they almost always are, I think how
good it is to have been part of such a chain of pleasure.
1998 continues its perplexing journey to who-knowswhere.
I started noticing a vegetal grassy tartness creeping
into some of them, but it seems to have disappeared. The
quality of fruit and aroma in the young wines was captivating,
the loveliest of the three best years of the 1990s (‘90, ‘96,
‘98), and hints of that charm begin to re-emerge. So we’ll
see. Many sage old growers insist the greatest wines zigzag
their way to maturity and often have truculent stages.
1997 is the most surprising of recent vintages. The
wines have slimmed down and found a lyric fruit that
has built on its early prettiness. It’s a better vintage than
I thought it to be in general; the great wines were apparent
at the start. If you own them it’s a fine time to visit
them. 1997 should always be an unfussy fruit-driven vintage,
but it’s more than merely pretty. I suspect it will age
gracefully, and be consistently graceful while aging.
1996 is deep in hibernation. It was fascinating to start
tasting the 1996 Champagnes just at the time the German
wines of that vintage were at their least forthcoming. To
some extent the evolution of many 1990s is a harbinger for
the development of the 1996s, though 1990 has more density
and body. My guess as of today: there will be more great
1990s than 1996s, but the best 1996s will be the best wines of
all. Call me out on this foolhardy forecast when I’m an old
coot. Indeed 1996 can be seen as a test case for acidity, and
we’ll see how those spiky acids resolve in the fullness of time.
Things I Would Do If I Were
Ruler Of All The Known World
First, either do away with cork or find a way to
neutralize its damage. I am fed up with the number of
corked bottles of German wine I encounter. Yes, outright
stinkers are rare, but these aren’t as scary as the
subtly corked wine, where something indistinct is
making the wine taste mute, furry, stale.
The Germans were—characteristically—slow to
adapt at first. I get a chuckle whenever a grower laments
the problem of cork—at his neighbor’s winery! Most of
them are certain their corks are of the highest quality.
“When was the last time you had a corked bottle of
mine?” they’ll demand. “Um, does yesterday count?” I
reply. But things seem to be changing quickly.
Now the topic is which alternative closure to use.
One guy worries about stelvins (“I don’t like my wine
being in contact with aluminium for so many years,” he
says.) while another observes “Since you Americans
seem to have this thing about sulfur, maybe stelvins
aren’t the best closure . . .” to which I could only reply it
isn’t all Americans, just two or three, one of whom’s half-
Euro anyways. There’s a very foxy device called Vino-lok
which is a glass cork and which I like. Rumpf’s using
crown corks. We do not urge them to change, but we tell
them we welcome any change they consider making—
except plastic.
Here’s something else I’d do; remove the spurious
glamour attending to “flying winemakers.” I’m not
sure why it’s sexy for someone to ride a plane to go
somewhere else to make wine. I appreciate wanderlust.
But I’m happier when someone chooses a place and
makes wine there, ideally the place he was born and
raised. He then becomes linked to his place and his
wine expresses the connection. The connection gives it
Just say no to corks.
significance. Otherwise wine becomes a plaything (a
thing, period). Johannes Selbach certainly racks up as
many frequent-flier miles as any human I know, yet I
cannot imagine him starting a wine “project” (the word
makes me wince) in New Zealand or Yunnan province.
He is a Moselaner; therefore the wine he makes is
Mosel wine.