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

meulenhof / erben justen ehlen
mosel • erden
I always write this text in early Spring. And today, April 4th, is opening day for my home-team.
A couple years ago I went to my first ball game of the new season one night, alone as it happened.
I had seats upstairs, and took the escalator. Riding up, there was a sudden brief glimpse
of the field through a gap in the stands, all gleaming under the lights, that impossible emerald.
And immediately I was a kid again, looking at the magic of a ballpark, and every time then and
every time since my step has quickened and my heart beat excitedly whenever I’ve entered the
ballpark. For it is an experience of beauty, you know. Soul doesn’t have a fixed address, boss. It
lives where it wants to. And each place it pauses to breathe is connected to all the places it has
ever paused and breathed.
So today is opening day, and I left this writing for a
few hours to watch my home team win their game, and
now I’m back. And I am going to risk you rolling your
eyes exasperatedly at me, because I’m gonna try to connect
two things ostensibly so disparate as to be impossible.
Still, away we go.
Each time I arrive at Justen there is always a wine,
usually one of the first wines, that sweeps through every
bit of experience I’ve brought with me, that snakes its fingers
past everything I think I know and grabs me with its
pure Mosel-ness. There is, after all, something singular
about these wines! And I am catapulted twenty-eight
years backward in time to that first scent of Mosel, whatever
it is, and it feels virginal and surprising again. It is
partly an alertness — this is something original. And
partly a swoon — this is something wonderful.
I’m hardly the first person to liken Mosel wines to
Spring. But Spring is of course not a single season, but
many.
First come the snowdrops, as early as mid-February,
and then the crocuses. The first daffodils begin sprouting.
The air is softer now, but below there’s still a keen
scent of frost. Things gurgle, the first cress arises impos-
Stefan Justen and daughter Barbara
•Vineyard area: 4.25 hectares
•Annual production: 3,600 cases
•Top sites: Erdener Prälat and Treppchen,
Wehlener Sonnenuhr
•Soil types: Weathered slate with Rotliegand
•Grape varieties: 80% Riesling, 11% Müller-
Thurgau, 9% Kerner
sibly soft and green by the water. This is the season of
Merkelbach.
The first fragrant blossoms are the cherries, each of
the several varieties that grow here, and in sunny spots
the perfumed crabapples unfurl their petals. The days
begin to feel almost warm in the ripening sunlight. On a
damp day the perfume of all these flowering trees can
almost intoxicate you. Violets, scilla and phlox carpet the
yards. This is the season of Christoffel.
Then all hell breaks loose. The first honeysuckle
opens, and the stately, lissome dogwoods, and the silly,
gaudy azaleas, and the air is emphatically warm, and the
trees open their sticky new leaves, and everything sprays
upward in a whistling clamor of life.
This is the season of Justen.
These may not be the most mysterious or intricate
Mosel wines I offer, but they are certainly the most gregarious
and extroverted. And yet they have virtues deeper than
simple winning personality; they are true-blue Mosels, and
I often thought that you, and I, neglected them. Thus it was
gratifying to see Justen get the credit he deserves with
emphatically flattering reviews of his recent vintages. I
hope he’s been “discovered” now and will take his rightful
place among important Mosel estates.
(I always refer to the estate as JUSTEN, by the way,
though I really should change this habit; I like a family’s
name more than a property’s name if I get to choose. But
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MOSEL WINES