Anne Krebiehl MW gave the Club a night to remember on 25thApril at the Maison Française. This was a night when young winemakers strutted their stuff, when revolution was in the air and when our old notions of German wine were turned upside down – and given a damn good shake.
With remarkable knowledge of soil, geology, chemistry, winemaking practice and the long – if not always glorious – history of German winemaking, Anne led us on a dramatic trail through new areas and new approaches to German wine.
Germany, she said, was ‘hobbled by an idiotic wine law’ which has made a ‘mockery’ of long-held concepts of quality and betrayed by the resultant oceans of ‘mass-produced crap’. Wines like Sekt had been ‘slaughtered at the altar of profit’ while the 1971 law had left the finest of mountain slopes given the same quality designation as ‘potato fields’.
But change was coming and here was its apostle.
We started with Sekt – but not the basic stuff turned out by big players like Henkell who turn out ‘god almighty plonk’ at €3.49 a bottle from endless, tasteless hectares of train-freighted Airen and Terbbiano. Next step up is Deutscher Sekt from German grapes at €6-7 a bottle – but that’s not what we got to taste.
We started the evening with Reichsrat von Buhl Sekt Brut 2014 made from the highest quality Riesling grapes grown on the von Buhl’s holdings of grand cru and premier cru sites (with some bought-in grapes) in the Pfalz.
This is an estate with a grand history. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was celebrated with von Buhl wine but the vicissitudes of the world wars that twice destroyed the German industry in the twentieth century reduced the estate and left it in the hands of a Japanese industrialist. Now it is once again German-owned and in a stunning coup Achim Niederberger recruited the Alsatian Matthieu Kauffmann as winemaker. Kauffman had ten years with Bollinger as their chef de caves and his ten year project (still only three years in) is to make serious sparkling wine from Riesling.
Most sparkling wine the world over is made from neutral base wines. Making it from Riesling adds huge opportunities but brings serious challenges. Growing grapes biodynamically in Germany is a challenge – no constant warm winds to keep the grapes dry – whilst the picking window for Riesling is very narrow. Too early and the grapes are green, too late and they’re over-ripe with too many terpenes and TDN for the requisite linearity and finesse for sparkling wine. Kauffmann’s philosophy is take the finest grapes, whole-bunch press and use only the first 50% of the juice (to avoid any bitter notes). The juice is then fermented before being matured on the lees in a mix of stainless steel and oak casks of various sizes. Minimal sulphur dioxide, no fining and lots of time complete the recipe before a final, sparing dosage of 4.9 gm per litre is added.
A deep yellow gold, the wine has a nose of brioche and fractionally candied lime. In the mouth it’s creamy with persistent small bubbles and the concentration of flavour of the best Riesling without the richness that can come close to cloying. This is a young wine and the finish is still a work in progress but the freshness and focus promise long life and much more to come. £18.95 from Laithwaites.
The second wine was the Griesel 2014 Prestige RoséExtra Brut (£28.75 from The Wine Barn). In contrast to the von Buhl, Griesel is a young business but another one with a star winemaker by name of Niko Brandner. Griesel is a boutique producer – only 60,00 bottles a year in total – but fast making a reputation in Pinot Noir, including his 100% Pinot-based Sekt. Brandner’s practice is quality-focused and minimalist, employing spontaneous ferment, no fining, no SO2in the first ferment (to keep the juice clear) and just a dash of red wine to give his roséa pale onion-skin colour. The nose has red currants, brioche and a touch of spice (cumin?) whilst on the palate it’s super dry (only 3.5 g of dosage), delicate with a ripe finish. This is another wine that will improve with a bit of age – and a touch more maturity in the vines – which are still very young. One to watch!
We moved then to two still Rieslings – of very different styles. The first we tasted was Bibo Runge’s 2015 Revoluzzer (and yes, it does mean ‘revolutionary’). Bibo Runge is a partnership based in Hallgarten (where the revolutionaries in question met under the ‘Tree of Liberty’ in 1848) and their wine comes from 30 year old low-yielding vines which are the product of sustainable organic viticulture. Basket presses are used for minimal pressure and they achieve great richness and length by long skin extraction (which also provides buffering for the pH) and slow fermentation in old Halbstücke. Malo is allowed but not induced and the result is complex yet refreshing: a nose of passion fruit and peach, a touch of lime and ginger and a dash of nutmeg. In the mouth, the tropical fruit flavours are balanced by more citrussy flavours to maintain freshness through the finish. (£25/30 from Delibo)
Riesling no 2 was from Thorstein Melsheimer’s family estate. Certified biodynamic since 2009, this Middle Moselle wine is grown on the steepest of inclines (Anne had blisters on the top of her feet from picking on 600slopes in gumboots). No ‘sulphured shit’ this Vade Retro but the product of endless care, meticulous picking and hygiene and minimal intervention from Thorstein. This is the estate’s flagship wine and the focus is on purity of flavour. It presents in the glass as a slightly cloudy amber gold and a remarkable, endlessly fascinating nose of creamy almonds, dried orange peel and sweet apples. Like Niko Brander, Melsheimer makes use of spontaneous fermentation on the skins. There’s no pumping, no filtration and no sulphur making this a rarity in almost every way. On the night it divided Club opinion but the more you tasted it the more it gave back. Even the Chairman was convinced by the end. £25/30 from Newcomer Wines)
These two wines provoked a lot of questions and comments. Was the Vade Retro representative of wines of older times? How did Germany get itself into its nearly fifty year confusion of terminology and styles? We asked – Anne had the answers. The invention of sterile filtration at the beginning of the 20th century played a part by allowing producers to market wines with residual sugar but the best estates continued to treat take the old terms such as Spätlese (late harvest) and Auslese (selected harvest) seriously rather than simply using them as surrogates for sugar levels. It was the 1971 law that enshrined the fetish for Oechsle (sugar) levels. The old terms such as Auslese or Kabinett were debased – and though there are rumours of new laws there are no easy fixes to get rid of the plague of Müller-Thurgau Spätlese. The best remedy for now is to buy Grosse Gewächse (‘great growths’).
We moved then to two pairs of red wines: a brace of impressive Pinot Noirs and two contrasting Lembergers (a grape that only a few of us had tried before).
In Germany Pinot Noir is Spatburgunder – and Spatburgunder has a long history. Possibly apocryphal, certainly unprovable, stories link its origins in Germany to King Charles the (possibly) Fat in 884 but certainly by 1321 it was present in the Affental. Probably in those days the wine would have been more vin gris than vin rouge and Anne reckoned that the real start of Germany’s Pinot Noir reputation was in the mid-1980s. Germany is now the world’s no 3 producer of Pinot Noir (behind only France and the USA) but with a style that’s more reminiscent of New Zealand or the Alto Adige than classic France.
The Piesporter Falkenberg 2014 Pinot Noir Trocken from Lehnert Veit (£35 from Lea & Sandeman) comes from steep premier cru vineyards on slate soil in the Mosel and, like the Rieslings, benefits from slow, low intervention winemaking. Pinot Noir was not allowed in this area until 1987 (a hangover from Nazi-era regulations) but this wine shows the progress made in the forty years since. Deep and intense ruby in the glass with a broad rim despite its youth, this wine shows ripe dark red fruit and suggestions of forest floor and spice in a complex nose. Serious rather than seductive on the palate with a long, complex finish and the promise of more to come. (£33.50 from Lea & Sandeman).
The second Pinot was the 2014 Kalkschupen Spätburgunden Grosses Gewächs grown by Ernst and Christian Dautel (father and dreadlocked son) on a single site in Württemberg that’s been in the family for around 500 years. Christian has had top-level experience all over the world before coming back to Bönnigheim and the family business. Grown on Triassic soils under organic principles with no chemical fertilisers and made slowly and traditionally, these wines have both substance and character. On the nose, Anne’s choice for the evening had a rich nose of coffee and blackcurrant with notes of elderberry and some strawberry. Excellent tannic structure and plenty of potential for ageing. (£40+ from delibo) .
From Pinot Noir we turned our attention to the pair of Lembergers (also widely known as Blaufränkisch) possibly came to Germany with Austrian migrants from Lemberg in Slovenian Styria. The Weingut Roter Faden in Rosswag (Württemberg) is run by young winemakers Olympia Samara and Hannes Hoffmann and, as their website says, their wines ‘are planted, picked, stamped and bottled with our own hands’. This wine was a glowing garnet with a somewhat pink rim and lots of black cherry and pepper on the nose. Made on limestone soil on the oldest terraces of this small vineyard the wine is whole bunch pressed with some mechanical extraction and the result is an delicious, easy drinking yet decently complex terroir wine with around 12% alcohol. (£25/30 from Newcomer Wines).
The final wine was Rainer Schnaitmann’s 2015 Simonroth Lemberger grown and made on the outskirts of Stuttgart. Another wine grown on limestone but a different winemaking philosophy featuring early harvesting (Lemberger can over-ripen very easily), fermentation in open wooden cuves but limited extraction and then spending one year in barrel with minimal sulphur. Deep violet in the glass and aromas of blackberries, black cherry and (as always with Lemberger) that hint of black pepper. Lots of length and, at £18.50 from Lay & Wheeler, many members reckoned it a very decent bargain.
The exacting quality and demanding sites meant that these wines are not in general cheap but, set against wines of equivalent quality from other areas of the world, they showed their worth. Pinots of the same quality from either France or USA would set you back a good deal more and the Sekts and Rieslings were superlative.
For many members this was the tasting of the year – and no wonder. Great wines and a great presenter. Thanks Anne!
GH: 26/4/18