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

MOSEL WINES
58
alfred merkelbach
mosel • ürzig
They gave me three pictures. We’ll use one of them, I’m not sure which. I’m looking at them
now. At first I took the “cutest” ones, because if there’s one thing about Rolf and Alfred
Merkelbach, it’s their adorableness. Everybody says so. I’ve said so. And when you meet them
they are always shy and smiling and giggling. So you want a picture that captures it.
The first of the pictures is of Rolf’s face peering out from among yellow leaves during harvest.
Everyone was giddy during the `05 harvest. Rolf’s entire being is suffused in Fall light, as if he is
asking “Does it get any better than this?” The second picture is of a Summer day, and the boys are
posing in front of the big URZIGER WURZGARTEN sign in the vineyard. They’re squinting a little
into the sun, and Rolf sports an unusually jaunty smile. This is the one we really should use.
The last of the three pictures they are back at the
winery, in what looks like the press house. They’re standing
a little apart, looking into the camera — it’s actually a
lovely composition. I don’t know quite why it’s making
me weepy, but it is.
I’ve known Rolf and Alfred for twenty-one years
now, but “known” isn’t really the word. When I’m there
we taste the wine and I enthuse and they giggle, and
unless a Selbach is present there’s hardly any schmoozing
— sometimes even then. I’m sure Merkelbachs are
glad of me but I have no idea what they make of me. Nor
I of them, if I’m entirely candid. I mean, of course I adore
them — they’re adorable, after all — but as I look at this
picture I find myself inside a warm mystery. Who are
they, what are their lives?
We say they’re the “last of a vanishing breed”, which
is certainly true. They do the whole thing themselves
(with a little help at harvest) and they live a modest life,
and they don’t appear to have raised their prices for at
Alfred & Rolf Merkelbach
least a decade. They give every appearance of perfect
contentment, and I believe they are. I hope they are; it’s
part of a faith I hold. Theirs are lives reduced to a degree
of simplicity and integration we wouldn’t tolerate. But
they are happy, picking grapes, posing in front of the big
sign, smiling into the camera. When I let myself really
•Vineyard area: 1.9 hectares
•Annual production: 1,600 cases
•Top sites: Ürziger Würzgarten, Erdener
Treppchen
•Soil types: Slate
•Grape varieties: 100% Riesling
think about them I sniff a kind of unknowable goodness,
and it both stirs and rebukes me. A voice challenges me:
Look at those faces, and now tell me just how valuable all
your hip, arch post-modern affects are. But also, feel the
divinity in these simple mysterious lives.
In my tasting notebook I see I wrote “Man, when
they nail it they nail it,” because they really aced the `05s.
Theirs was like the sorbet course in a degustation dinner
you’re starting to wonder if you have the stamina to finish.
Every wine an awakening splash of purity.
One night I was at the ball park. I’m a purist; I like to
arrive early and watch the guys take batting practice and
shag fly balls while the stands slowly fill up and the players
pause to sign autographs. So there I was watching
some rookie who barely had a beard take b.p. and he was
really whacking the ball, line-drive after line-drive, just
sizzling bullets hitting the outfield fences, slapped to all
fields with a satisfying crack! And I was reminded of
something . . . but what?
And then I opened this text in the computer and
there it was: Merkelbachs! Not a towering home-run in the
bunch, but screaming line-drives that’d take your
freakin’ head off and bruise your hand through your
glove if you were lucky enough to spear one.
After greetings are exchanged, we sit at the rather
small round table in the parlor where Rolf
or Alfred bring out the wines one by one. The first wine
was poured and I took an idle sniff and there it was: every