Stuart Pigott's Planet Wine

Sophisticated German red wine? Really? Internationally, there’s still a lot of resistance to the idea that red wines from Germany can be better than moderately good and even this would be an exception to the rule. Amongst experts and Somms around the world the standard view is still of Germany as the prototypic cool climate wine producing nation, that therefore the white wines will always work better than reds, and even these will tend to be light in body and high in acidity. Many of those experts and somms are convinced that German red wines are hopelessly over-oaked, if necessary in defiance of evidence to the contrary. The truth is that a combination of climate change and greatly increased ambition in red winemaking already began altering this significantly during the early 1990s. However, the problem with this statement is that proving it requires opening bottles spanning that period and not many German red wine producers have such bottles.

That’s what made yesterday evening’s tasting at the home of Anne Krebiehl MW in Leytonstone, London so special. We tasted 10 vintages of the Spätburgunder / Pinot Noir from the Fürst estate of Bürgstadt in Franken ranging from 2103 back to the 1990 vintage. All were from the same vineyard site, the Centgrafenberg and had been made either by Paul Fürst, the estate’s winemaker since 1979 and/or by his son Sebastian, pictured above. It was a very convincing piece of proof that at least some German reds have been worth taking seriously for a long time, that there has been a very positive development in the winemaking skills for these wines, and, at least amongst the leading makers of red wines in Germany, also in their feeling for harmony, elegance and delicacy in these wines.

On one level, the vitality of the 1990 Centgrafenberg Spätburgunder  – the first wine I ever tasted from the Fürsts back in spring 1993 – was the most important piece of news, because that’s something few wines from the Pinot Noir grape manage to retain at this age. The smoky note in this wine was very distinctive, and Sebastian Fürst explained that this is rather typical for the Spätburgunder clones from the vine breeding station in Freiburg, Baden (in the far SW of Germany). There was also an elderberry aroma that grew considerably in intensity as the wine aerated in the opened bottle. However, on another level, the consistency in quality of the entire row was really more impressive that that singular success, since consistently high quality is something famously difficult to achieve with “fickle” Pinot Noir anywhere in the world, including its homeland of Burgundy, France. It’s fickle, because it presents the winemaker with a complex and interlocking set of challenges, and focusing too much on one obvious issues like the tendency to pale color, can lead to other problems. Let’s be frank, I’m glad I don’t have to make red wines from this grape!

In spite of the consistency of quality there was an important stylistic shift through the row of wines. Often this is portrayed in the wine and gastronomic media as a direct product of the generational change, but this cannot be so. The super-elegent and now beautifully mature 2001 Centrafenberg Spätburgunder from Fürst, had a freshness and bright red fruit aromas that the more robust wines of  1990, ’97 and ’99 vintages didn’t have. This wine was made 6 years before Sebastian began to be involved in the winemaking, so it can only have resulted from a shift in his father’s thinking. However, this was certainly the path that Sebastian also followed when he began working in the vineyards and cellar, as the 2009, ’10, ’12 and ’13 vintages (vintages labelled as “GG” or Großes Gewächs, the VDP producers’ associations equivalent of the French Grand Cru). The 2012 was the perfect example of this, already super-silky in spite of its considerable  power, very subtle and delicate in aroma in spite of the ripeness (which can make red wines lean in a sweetish and one-sidedly rich direction). Lastly, the enthusiasm of the other tasters for the “lesser” vintages of 2008, ’10 and ’13 with their crisp acidity must be passed on. This was not an occasion when concentration or scale was sought above all else, in fact there was more excitement about the wines “freshness, life,” their, “leafy hints,” and their, “poetic,” and “sexy” qualities.

Maybe that says something about the tasters too? Certainly, Nigel Greening – the owner of Felton Road in Central Otago, New Zealand – produces Pinot Noirs – that share these qualities and stand out in their national context for that. David Motion (thanks for the photograph at the top) of The Winery in London is also a seeker after character and elegance, rather than brute force or opulence. Amazingly, it wasn’t only for us the first time that we’d tasted 10 vintages of these wines in one go, but also for Sebastian Fürst. So the effort that all the participants made was well worth while. I’m only sorry that Anne Krebiehl’s table couldn’t seat more, because the message of yesterday evening deserves to be spread!

I’m often asked whether I love Britain or hate Britain every time I write a blog posting in England or about England. It is one of the eternally recurring questions, only topped in frequency by, “Mr. Pigott, how did you get into wine?”

I was brought up as a sceptic, that is not to trust accepted wisdom without question it and the groups of people who promote its acceptance as The Truth. At the Royal College of Art where I studied for an MA in cultural history in 1984-6 I was taught to take apart statements, stories and ideas to see how they tick, like a clockmaker who’s task is to repair a bunch of old clocks, some of which still seem to run well, others run too slow or fast, and some don’t run at all. I still do that in this blog, and the statements, stories and ideas I take apart and put back together again come from all kinds of places on Planet Wine. Sometimes they are from Britain, and this leads some British readers to the questions in the title of this posting in a very pointed way. The unspoken undertone of what they say is, “are you still a Brit, or have you gone native in Germany/America and become a Britain basher?” Am I, even, a traitor?

I was certainly never blindly loyal to H.M. British Government, nor any other national government, or political party. However, I am not a Britain basher. Let me tell you about what I love most about Britain. I love the taste of England, also the taste of Wales and of Scotland. Of course, these places have many tastes and I am over-generalizing, but a simple question demands a simple answer. What I mean by this is, that my sense of how good milk and butter, peas and beans, apples and berries, chicken and beef, and many other things should taste developed during my childhood and teenage years (1960 thru 1979) in Britain. It was primarily through my family and my grandparents that I had those key expereinces, but as time went on I began to gather them on my own, or with the help of my close friends (thanks again Liz & Dave, Paul & Myra). During my teens I was also introduced to elements of French and Italian cuisines through London restaurants, and my mother’s interpretation of some of those dishes. And all this remains an important part of the knot of British culture which is the core of my identity.

That’s why the tarte au citron, or lemon tart I ate yesterday at Maison Bertaux in Greek Street, Soho is pictured above. It’s a perfect example of an anglicized French dish. It is – and this is typical of British food – rather more robust than the foreign original; at once subtle and satisfying. So are the wonderful croissants and fruit tarts at Maison Berteaux. At its best New British Cuisine (from the very late 1980s and through the 1990s and into this century) reinterpreted a variety of French-British, Italian-British, etc dishes by applying the principals of French nouvelle cuisine to them, but with a feeling for the solidity and generosity of the result. This is exactly what Marco Pierre White did so brilliantly, and at his restaurants it was almost impossible to eat more than three courses, but you didn’t want any more if you had something like his wonderful stuffed pig’s trotter. In spite of the rise and influence of molecular and Nordic cuisines this remains the core value of British Cuisine to this day.

Of course, I don’t like the “taste” of everything British. For example, in common with the British rock singer P.J. Harvey, I find that the foreign policy of H.M. Government tastes bitter.  The British Empire and Britain’s political influence in the world have been in decline ever since the Empire reached its maximum extent a century ago (swollen by the “booty” of WWI), and they continue to decline. However, it seems that almost any means of hanging on to the remainders of these things – although on the world map the various colonies look like coffee grounds in a long-since drained cup of coffee! – is regarded as necessary and legitimate. This attitude is based upon a dangerous optical illusion in the minds of members of the British Establishment that makes things far in the past appear much close than they actually are. This creates a situation where out of the bitter taste of the British ambition to “punch above our weight” on the world stage (note the violence in the metaphor) a fiery taste could all too easily develop. I suggest that the rich and mellow flavor of the café aux lait at Maison Berteaux, pictured above, is vastly preferable to this. In this, and in many other departments, Britain has something distinctive to offer the world. That should be enough!

I’ve often been asked why I left England and never returned, except for short visits like this one. That question is most frequently posed by British people who can’t understand why anyone could ever want to leave this country. The fact that I’m still a British citizen makes it even more difficult for them to understand, but explaining even that detail is delaying me answering that question. Why did I leave?

I started drifting away from England after I completed my education with an MA in cultural history from the Royal College of Art in London on July 6th, 1986. I’d already begun traveling to Germany quite frequently to research the nation’s wine industry, and this had overwhelmingly been a positive experience. By the end of 1987 my father had died of a brain tumor, I had split with a girlfriend, lost my place in a shared student flat and been forced to move back to my mother’s house because I couldn’t find anywhere else to live I could afford. From that moment nothing much was keeping me in England. For some years I’d had serious misgivings about the direction “Thatcher’s Britain” was taking, and I reckoned that my chances in this new environment that worshipped only Mammon were meagre. Needing to make a new start after the disastrous year of 1987, I decided to make the Mosel Valley in Germany my base and learn how that wine region ticks from the inside. At that point Germany was a string of positives set against the many negatives that Britain stood for in my mind; the choice was rather easy.

My self-imposed exile worked too. By the end of 1994 I was well established in Berlin with my then wife Ursula Heinzelmann (a talented writer who’s history of German food, Beyond Bratwurst, is highly recommended). My first German language book had caused a stir and resulted in me acquiring a degree of notoriety or infamy, depending upon your perspective. This all confirmed my conviction that I had a much better chance of success in Germany, and in spite of all the ups and downs I’ve experienced during the last twenty years, that turned out to be true. Although the flowering of British culture that was YBA, Brit-Pop and Cool Britannia during the mid and late 1990s fascinated me I observed and reported on it as an outsider. The break was clean and it has remained so.

It is as an outsider that I visit Britain, returning to familiar and favorite places (like Maison Bertaux in Greek Street, Soho pictured above) and sometimes explore new places. It is very much the same with people too. My emotional connection is to those particular places and people here, not to this island as a whole, much less to the nation of the same name. So, am I still British in any meaningful sense, or just a person who happens to have a British passport?

Inside me is a great twisted knot of British culture, and I cannot imagine that it could ever be untied, nor can I imagine ever wanting to do so. This knot has many loose ends that extend into the distance, threads that keep leading me to new connections. I often encounter them by “chance”, like my recent discovery of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76, that dropped into my hands at exactly the moment I was most open to its message – that originality and pride in originality are unnecessary. Since the end of 2012 I’ve had two places of exile, New York and Berlin, but this has in no way altered my fundamental situation. The knot of British culture, in which the popular, the alternative, the tacky and the classic are all tangled up is the core of my being, whether I like it or not. In this sense, it is irrelevant if I never return and I have also never really left, because England is in me.

PS For people of other nationalities, I should point out that the confusion of England and Britain is something peculiar to my nationality. For someone born in England like me  the two terms are interchangeable, however confusing that may seem to outsiders.

The Times they are a’ changin’, and as the title of that 1964 Bob Dylan song makes clear they have been changing for a long time. Change is afoot at this blog too.

About a decade ago I started talking about re-search, rather than research. Why? Many journalists and other non-fiction writers just rewrite what someone else has written, because that’s easier than doing any research. Through their plagiarism things that are no longer true, were never really true in the first place, or were outright lies from the beginning are unthinkingly further disseminated.  Untruths of this kind are at the root of many of the worst prejudices in our world. From the destructive consequences which the frequent lack of research has you can extrapolate what a force for good research can be. It must, however, be genuine research, that is re-search to have that effect. Just going through the motions of, for example, going to a distant winegrowing region, visiting producers, tasting wines and taking notes is not enough. You’d be surprised how often that kind of thing happens too, and in all fields of journalism. A good journalist actively searches again, because she or he knows that they always approaches their subject with preconceptions. The goal of their re-search is to overcome them, for without that there can be no new story to tell, and no truth comes out (although the truth will out). Why did I never write that here before? No good reason!

Now I’m back with those two letters – RE – because this blog is undergoing a process of re-thinking, re-orientation and re-newal . Many personal changes during the last weeks and months are the background to this, but, of course, those kind of changes don’t necessarily lead to re-thinking, much less re-orientation and re-newal. I have to do this because yesterday over a cup of coffee my colleague Jürgen Fränznick, who was also my first landlord in New York City (at the Hotel of Hope on East 7^th Street in the East Village of Manhattan) made some very pertinent criticisms of this blog. Regular readers should not dismay though, for you may hardly notice the change during the coming weeks and months. My blog will continue to look much as it has done since the spring of 2012, and the mix of subjects will not be abandoned. However, it is time to be more direct in the way I tell these stories, and this may be the last elliptical story! It is also the last story for some time from NYC. I’m sad to leave, because I love this city, but all things must change.

Some of you may be wondering what George Orwell, the famous 20^th century British writer, has got to do with wine. Here is one connection I see:

The most important writers for me are the ones that make me feel that whatever weaknesses my work may have what I’ve written isn’t complete rot, and also give me clear insights into how my writing could become better. By better I mean not just in the superficial stylistic sense, rather how I could tell the story better. George Orwell just became one of those writers, although I was a teenager when I fist read his novels Animal Farm and 1984. That means some years before the actual 1984. They made a deep impression upon me, as they did on many other people of my generation, not least because one of them (Animal Farm) seemed like an explanation of important events in the recent past, while the other (1984) seemed like a terrible prediction of what might still come to pass. However, I read them years before I started writing, and yet longer before I wrote a story with any substance, and also for this reason they never connected with my work in any way. No doubt, the fact that I never went back and reread either of them also had something to do with this, as did my focus on non-fiction.

I was completely unaware of George Orwell’s essays and journalism until a couple of years ago when my mother gave me a small paperback containing a handful of them. There I found Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism which he completed in May 1945 and was stunned by it in more sense than one. In it, he shows how all manner of dogmatic belief systems that don’t revolve around a nation, but are associated with religions or political parties, really function in exactly the same way as nationalism. (Please note that Orwell doesn’t say that, for example, being American makes you an American nationalist or being Jewish makes you a proponent of Jewish nationalism). However, in that essay he shows the fundamentally irrational nature of all forms of nationalism, and how this leads to both prejudices and the complete inability to face certain truths.

No area of modern life is entirely free of the influence of such nationalistic cults and their effects. Although this may seem to of paltry importance compared with say Russian nationalism or that revolving around Catholicism the wine world is also afflicted by nationalistic cults. The most obvious of these are associated with biodynamic wine and so-called natural wine and overlap. This doesn’t mean that every winemaker involved or every fan of these wines is part of the cult, but many of them certainly show the symptoms of what for Orwell was, the great modern disease. I think it makes sense to start a description of these forms of nationalism by looking at the most obvious difference between them, the attitude to the use of sulfur in winemaking.

The recorded use of sulfites as a preservative goes back more than 500 years, and may well date back as far as the Romans. However, for the natural wine movement it is inherently suspect, and if any sulfites are allowed to be added, then it must be the absolute minimum. For biodynamic winemakers and the advocates of those wines a significantly reduced sulfite content is the good and right path. The similarity of that difference to a theological dispute between purists and idealists capable of a certain degree of pragmatism is rather clear.

Now let’s turn to their common ground and the core vale of both belief systems: Nature, and specifically that which is supposed to be natural in wine. As far as I can see the idealization of Nature and all things “natural” in Western culture goes back to the works of the 18^th century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the enormous influence they exerted upon his contemporaries and subsequent generations. For the advocates of biodynamic and/or natural wines there is something at least slightly holy about their wines. The winemakers on this page believe that their work in the vineyards and cellars doesn’t manipulate the wine in the way that of their conventional colleagues do. There’s some truth behind this, although the far greater difference is in the vineyard.  There the rules of biodynamic winegrowing forbid chemical fertilizer, fungicides and insecticides even more strictly than regular organic winegrowing.

However, the truth is that almost all the winemakers who claim their wines are “natural” plant the vines in their vineyards in straight parallel rows, spray with copper sulfate (copper is heavy metal) against downy mildew, crush the grapes using modern presses, and package their wine in industrially manufactured glass on modern bottling lines. None of this is in any way natural, but they rarely talk about those things unless you ask them direct questions, and I think many of them don’t really think about these things either. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing their wines here, some of which are great (but so are many conventional wines), just trying to show that their beliefs are often irrational and inconsistent with what they actually do. The problem is greater with the advocates of natural wine than with those of biodynamic wine, because their rhetoric tends to be more extreme. The basic situation is the same though.

To make it plain how crazy all this can get I have to tell a story about a winemaker in the southwest of Germany who wishes to remain anonymous. Recently his Japanese importer, who is specialized in the biodynamic and/or natural wines, visited him. When her flight from Tokyo arrived in Frankfurt she picked up her rental car at the airport and drove straight to his cellars. First of all she wanted to taste the wines with him and was clearly very impressed, understand so, because he makes great reds and sparkling wine from the Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) grape. Then he took her out for a vineyard tour and things suddenly turned sour. As they walked into the first of his plots she gave a gasp and said, “oh no, you’re using wire! That destroys the energy field in the vineyard.” Wire is the means of supporting the vines’ foliage in 99.99% of the world’s vineyards, and the type of energy that she was talking about can’t be measured by any scientific equipment. The winegrower wondered what he could possibly say. What arguments would she accept, or even listen to?

Over dinner with more of his wine this very awkward moment seemed forgotten and she explained that the next day her appointments were in the neighboring region of Alsace, France. The German winegrower said he would be interested to accompany her, because the biodynamic and natural winemakers of Alsace have a considerable reputation and he hadn’t visited any of them so far. He offered to do the driving and she agreed to his proposal. The next morning there was beautiful weather as they drove over the Rhine to Alsace, but when they reached the small town where their first appointment was the winegrower lost the way. The Japanese wine importer then whipped out her iPad and quickly directed him to their destination. As they arrived it suddenly hit him: she had flown to Europe from Japan in a modern jet aircraft, travelled to his place by car, then used an iPad, but he wasn’t not supposed to use wire in his vineyards, because his wine had to be holy. To acquire that status it had to be as “natural” as possible, because for the advocates of biodynamic and natural wines Nature is God, and drinking wine is therefore communion with Him/Her (which is obviously adapted from a Christian source).

I’m not against wine having a spiritual dimension, only against this being at the expense of the concrete and practical, sensual and aesthetic dimensions. As Francois Mitjavile of Tertre Rotebeboeuf in St. Emilion, Bordeaux said to me once, “if wine is all man then it is really boring, but if it is all nature then it is just vinegar! You have to find a balance between the two, but where does that lie?” It sin’t a simple question to answer.

An event like @CityofRiesling in Traverse City is a great opportunity to experience a bunch of wines that you otherwise wouldn’t have tasted, but far more important are the people behind the wines. As Brad Bickle, who’s business is mergers and acquisitions told me, “it was a great opportunity to actually talk with the winemakers as you tasted their wines.”In Brad’s case the revelation at the Night of 100 Rieslings were the powerful and vivid dry wines from Brooks in Oregon which winemaker Chris Williams presented, which were a world of flavor he hadn’t associated with the grape before. By the way, Chris Williams jet skied across Grand Traverse Bay to reach the Night of 100 Rieslings, which confirmed his status as an underground rock star wine guy!

In my case, the taste of the wines from Galen Glen in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania was familiar, but it was no less an important experience for me to talk with winemaker Sarah Troxell, pictured above, about them for the first time. Galen Glen planted back in 1999, but has been under the wine media and wine scene radar, because of their “wrong” location (wine from PA isn’t supposed to be good), their focus on the “wrong” grape varieties (Riesling and Grüner Veltliner aren’t supposed to be growing in PA), and the fact that they sell most of their production through their own tasting room (for the wine scene what doesn’t make it to NYC and SF/LA doesn’t really exist). However, none of that alters the fact that these are white wines of purity and elegance with a lot of subtlety, and for me these are great wines and she is an underground rock star wine chick. Over the two days of the event I learnt from her how a lot of precise hand work lies behind all this, which makes a lot of sense. Wines like this are never accidents.

Salon Riesling on the second day was composed of a series of four tastings hosted by panels and some really great discussion took place. Of course, Riesling’s difficulties in the marketplace were discussed and the session that compared Riesling with Sauvignon Blanc (SB is my favorite grape’s main competitor) was very illuminating. SB is one-paced and often simplistic, not least because the vines are often over-cropped and the wines are rushed into the bottle as a result of the same imperative for profit maximization. The consumer isn’t aware of this though, because they are focused on the narrow range of aromas and predictable taste profile of the wines. It is exactly this predictability that attracts them, because it means they have the comforting feeling of knowing exactly what they’re getting. That’s why it accounts for more than 7% of all wine sales in the US compared with Riesling’s 1% share of the market.

Of course, compared with SB Riesling is seriously individual, and has a staggering range of aromas and tastes. As I wrote in BEST WHITE WINE ON EARTH it spans the entire range from bone dry to honey sweet, from featherlight to ton heavy. As Nicolas Quille of Pacific Rim in the Columbia Valley of Washington State pointed out, “the beauty of Riesling is its limitation in the marketplace.” This is a painful truth and although the introduction of the IRF taste profile indicating the sweetness level of (many but sadly not all) Rieslings is a big step forward it is not a complete solution to that problem. He has done a great job of improving the balance of all the Pacific Rim Rieslings in recent years, to which all the 2014s are still on the full lees; a daring move for a winery of this size Meanwhile the 2013s from Pacific Rim prove that quality and quantity can be combined in modestly-priced Rieslings that have a rather mainstream appeal. That’s quite an achievement!

I brought a vertical tasting of Scharzhofberger Riesling Auslese from Egon Müller-Schrzhof with me to Traverse City and they were served at a lunch on the final day. It was great to find that the oldest of these wines, the 1983 Auslese, was still in great shape, because this was one of the first wines I put in my cellar exactly 30 years ago. Other high points were the enormously concentrated 2001 Auslese Gold Cap – all the honey, dried figs and mango you could ever want! – and the 2005 Auslese, which seemed to expand directly from my mouth into the deepest corners of my nervous system. These would be very expensive wines to buy ($500 – $1,000) per bottle, but the great thing about Riesling is how they peacefully co-exist with startling original, modestly priced wines like the 2014 Stone Cellar from Galen Glen. In the Cabernet world more modestly priced wines rarely get taken seriously except as cheaper alternatives to the “right” stuff, even if they’re as beautiful as the 2012 from Smith Madrone in Napa, California.

Events like this wouldn’t happen without people like Amanda Danielson of The Franklin and Trattoria Stella (two of Traverse City’s best restaurants) and Sean O’Keefe of Mari Vineyards, pictured right. Organizational talent, determination and hard work aren’t enough to pull off something like this year’s @CityofRiesling. For that, you need all those things plus a vision of what the wines make possible in terms of human interaction (the subject of today’s blog posting). Discussion at the seminar tastings was so exciting, and raised so many important questions and issues, because the panel members were chosen on the basis of what they would have to say, not on their fame. Often those who are almost famous have way more to say for themselves than those who’s fame and egos are as big as zeppelins. In Traverse City the panelists enabled me to learn not only what is happening with Riesling in the US, but also how that fits into the broader picture including the stuff that is supposed not to happen (for example the illegal kick-backs used to buy into restaurant wine lists and onto store shelves in some states).  However, the most important revelations all were the startling new Rieslings of exceptional quality are being produced in the US. For example, the 2014 “239” Dry Riesling from Bruce Murray’s Boundary Breaks estate in the Finger Lakes of New York isn’t released yet. Wines like this will make waves when they reach the market shortly.