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

MOSEL WINES
70
a.j. adam
mosel • dhron
You want a garagiste? Here’s a garagiste! The guy makes about 600 cases of frickin unbelievable
wine in his spare-time from Grand Cru vineyards.
It took me (too) many years to learn there’d never be enough time to have the kind of
soul-searching conversations about wine philosophy I wanted to have with my growers. Also,
that such conversations couldn’t be contrived, but needed to happen spontaneously. Yet I wanted
to know what made a grower tick, and so I created a little questionnaire which I leave behind
for the grower to answer at his/her leisure. The results go into my catalog text, augmented by bon
mots which actually do arise in conversation.
Andreas Adam is an intense young man, and meeting
him for the first time it was subdued by his old-world
politeness. But answering my written questions in solitude
seems to have unleashed the beast. Adam is both his
own man — very much so — yet also emblematic of the
new wave in German wine-think. I don’t agree with
everything he espouses, but his bedrock passion is stirring.
I think of that instant of ignition when I tasted my
first Adam wine, and it all starts to make sense.
Here’s some of what he wrote:
“The hardest work of vinifying a great wine takes
about nine months, from February till the beginning of
November — rather like a pregnancy — during which
time we let what happens happen, without disturbing or
perturbing nature,
but rather we watch
over and work in
harmony with
nature’s larger
power.
“An aside: I’m
sitting here writing
on our terrace under
a blue sky. Nearby
sits a fallow vineyard,
to which a vintner
is carrying chemical
fertilizer. . . .
“I renounce any
and all such treatments.
I sustain my
vineyards by intensive
soil-work (I was
ploughing this
Andreas Adam
morning; it smells so
wonderfully of fresh
earth and slate) to bring the essential nutrients up from
the primary rock, the natural compost of a vineyard. This
completion of the bond between the elemental soil and
the work of the vintner is another piece in the puzzle of
terroir. “
Well-said!
•Vineyard area: 1 hectares
•Annual production: under 500 cases
•Top sites: Dronerhofberg
•Soil types: Weathered slate with clay
•Grape varieties: 100% Riesling
I then ask the grower, which is his peak-site. And
why; is his choice due to specific terroir/microclimactic
factors, or other circumstances such as vine-age or vinematerial?
“We love our Dhronhofberger, in its lovely quiet
side-valley, which leaves stress behind and is out of the
stream of all which is trendy in German wine-growing;
today Cabernet, tomorrow Sauvignon Blanc.
What makes the vineyard great is of course its flavors;
even young it often shows a striking exotic fruit,
subtle spice, wild slate aromas and a finesse of acidity.”
I agree. The only reason this site isn’t front-and-center
among Mosel Grand Crus is the lack of a flagshipestate
— until now. Hofberger is one of those Mosel sites
with complex slate, in this case with a vein of clay and
with a measure of the sandy slate-variant of the Nahe. It
is both archetypal Mosel yet also extra-Mosel; it sometimes
makes me think of Dönnhoff’s Brücke.
Next I ask about terroir. Of course! Not for nothing
have I been anointed terroir-lama. My question is specific:
do you believe that components in your soil create flavors
in your wines?
“I think in Germany we see terroir as a unity of
grape, climate, soil, and the mentality of the person who
works the vineyard. But the essence of that mentality is a
knowledge that the geology of his terrain indeed creates
the flavors in the grapes which grow there. Thus if you
consider Riesling from blue-gray slate from the
Goldtröpfchen, in its youth it’s herbacious, with delicate
lime fragrance and mineral-salty on the palate. Contrast