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

willi schaefer
mosel • graach
I have no idea what I did to deserve it (maybe they were expecting someone else and I rang
the doorbell) but there was a `59 ready to be opened when I arrived.
After we finished drinking it I commiserated with Willi. “I feel for you when I drink a wine
like this,” I said. Willi knows I can’t be trusted to ever say anything sensible, so he smiled wryly
and said “Comiserate? Why so?” and I answered “Well, it has to be frustrating when you feel
like drinking an old wine and every damn thing in your cellar tastes so young.”
In fact I have never once had an “old”-tasting bottle from Willi, and this lovely `59 was no
exception: It is Graacher Himmelreich Auslese, the same parcel from which the best `76 Auslese came,
directly next to Domprobst. As always, eerily green still, a few flecks of yellow but no gold; fresh aromas
of lime and slate dance with beeswax and balsam. The palate is
sappy with a lovely undertone of grain, pine, tilleul at its highest
form; almost unnervingly limpid and fresh. Willi says
“You taste the heaviness of the vintage,” but all I taste is this
comely transparent grace. The finish is searching but the wine
is Spring-gentle and sparrow-voiced. BLESS this culture, who
brought and still bring the world these gentle, helpful, selfeffacing
works of beauty.
It was May 1978 when I first visited and met with
him. I loved his wines and went whenever I could. I’ll
never forget one time I took a friend who was just getting
into wine. It was a perfect Spring day, and Willi’s
garden looked inviting. “Would you like to sit in the garden
with a bottle and relax awhile?” he asked. There
were other visitors and his father was entertaining an old
client. “Sure,” I said. I purchased a half-bottle of `75
Domprobst BA, and we sat in the shade listening to the
birds, looking straight up at the impossibly steep
Domprobst. The air was sweet with blossom. The wine
was sublime.
We
were nearly
in tears.
Then suddenly
a
tenor voice
started
singing,
some chipper
little
lied about
Spring.
Will Schaefer and Terry
My friend
stared at
me and we both laughed. “No!” he said, “You staged
this, right? It isn’t actually happening, right?”
At this point Willi and I are so boisterous together
I’m sure we’d absolutely freak out my teenager (Oh God
dad, ICK) and in fact it’s pretty silly I must admit. But
this is truly the world’s nicest guy and I’m just giddy to
•Vineyard area: 3.5 hectares
•Annual production: 2,600 cases
•Top sites: Graacher Domprobst and
Himmelreich
•Soil types: Devonian slate
•Grape varieties: 100% Riesling
see him, and we laugh and laugh. But laughing isn’t all
we do. We’ve known each other 28 years now, and one
respects the dignity of such a clump of time. One year
Willi announced that our occasion deserved to be commemorated
with something a little special. He disappeared
for a few minutes, and returned with a 1953,
which he knew was my birth-year. “Twenty five years
for us, and fifty for you,” he said; “It seems appropriate,
I think!”
It was Willi and his son Christoph, me and Corrie
Malas and Mark Hutchens and Bill Mayer, and Willi’s
wife Esther joined us (though it was a little early in the
day to drink wine; still, it was a `53 . . .). And the wine
was poured. It still tasted primary, still had fruit and
architecture, still had some chlorophylly green flecked
in among the gold. It was limpid and essentially ageless.
(Like me!) The wine was in fact astonishing, yet the
experience of sharing it in friendship with Schaefers was
beyond description.
“Willi, let me take a glass to your mother,” said
Esther. “She’ll enjoy drinking a wine her husband made.”
Well, this day was off to a good start! Barely 10am,
and I had a `53 in my glass in the company of the family
who made it, and who seemed to like me.
Eventually, Willi tells me, the holdings will be
enlarged and there’ll be more wine for us greedy
sybarites. As it is Willi could easily choose to grow, but
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MOSEL WINES