Stuart Pigott's Planet Wine

Perhaps you already heard the news and your jaw already dropped as mine did when I read it in the Rhine Main Presse newspaper of April 22nd. The Tesch estate of Langenlonsheim/Name has left the elite VDP wines estates’ association of Germany. That daring decision  was made by Dr. Martin Tesch, pictured above during my tasting of his 2012 and 2013 wines yesterday in his HQ.

It was an extremely interesting tasting. Almost the entire wine scene and nearly all the critics have long-since switched their focus from the 2012 wines to the 2013s, but the dry Rieslings from Tesch are marathon runners who never sprint off at the beginning of the race like many other wines, instead maintaining a steady pace throughout the race, slowly, but steadily, moving through the pack and towards the front of the field. The sole problem for Tesch during recent years has been the unwillingness of many people in the wine media, trade and scene to recognize this fact. Continuing with the athletic metaphor, for them the only races that really count are the 100 and 200 meters, and occasionally the 400 meters. All too often this is about rapidly and clearly demonstrating their own importance, rather than finding out about the wines’ potential. The dry wines of Müller-Catoir of Neustadt-Haardt/Pfalz, suffer in the way, so this isn’t only a problem for Tesch.

But enough of metaphors, what about the wines? Tesch’s six dry 2012 Rieslings (Unplugged plus the five single vineyard wines) were obviously hard for some professional tasters to make sense of a year ago, but now they are an extremely impressive group. How many wines out there have this strength of personality and an  excellent harmony, in spite of being bone dry? Very few. Following the general tendency of the new vintage, his 2013s are slightly more acidic and much less ready to drink. My guess is that their potential will also be misjudged, but that they are almost as good as the 2012. The other strength of the Tesch wines is their great consistency.

Tesch switched completely to bottling with Stelvin Luxe screwcaps instead of corks with the 2005 vintage. So it is logical for him to think of vertical tastings like the one of his dry Riesling from the Karthäuser site of Laubenheim in terms of 2005 to the latest vintage. That is exactly the row of wines he put in front of me, and it was a most remarkable row too. You see, although the differences between the vintages (particularly between the cool vintages and warm ones) were striking every single wine impressed. I can’t remember the last time that a leading German Riesling producer poured a 2006 vintage wine for me (what I tasted from my own cellar tells me many of them have aged prematurely because of a negative Botrytis character), but Tesch’s 2006 Karthäuser was still in good shape and a real pleasure to drink. 2008 was a problematic year for entirely different reasons, generally having an even more aggressive acidity then 2013. Tesch’s 2008 Karthäuser was remarkable polished for a wine of this vintage. I just wish I’d had the time to taste through the wines after the bottles had been open another few hours, because I feel sure that the wines would have become even more interesting then.

Tesch’s decision to reach for the ejector seat button will no doubt lead to another round of “Tesch bashing”, but frankly I think that would probably have happened anyway. However, it throws up a string of questions for the VDP, particularly for its Nahe group which is now down to just 9 members. The most important of these is whether the Nahe is really such a weak wine region that there are only 9 top producers there? I think an official answer to that question is necessary.

PS There was an amazing comment on this story by Justin Christoph which I gladly give here in full:

There’s Pradikats on the street
Kab, Spat, and Auslese
People shufflin’ their feet
Sussreserve in their shoes
But there’s a Government Warning Label
on the bottle in my hand
There’s a lot of people sayin’
we’d be better off dry
Don’t feel like Parker,
but I am to them
So I try to drink it,
Any way I can.

Keep on Trocken in the free world,
Keep on Trocken in the free world,

I see a woman in the night
With a bottle in her hand
Under an old street light
Wine made in a garbage can
Now she puts the Sancerre away,
and she’s gone to get a hit
She hates her wine,
and what they’ve done to it
There’s one more wine
that will never be made in school
Never get to fall apart,
never get to be cool.

Keep on Trocken in the free world,
Keep on Trocken in the free world,

We got a hundred points of right
For the Blaufranksich man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun Wine Spectator
We got department stores
Selling wines and toilet paper
Got Monsanto GMOs
for oozing into every layer
Got a blogger of the people,
says stay dry to keep hope alive
Got alcohol to burn,
got roads to drive.

Keep on Trocken in the free world,
Keep on Trocken in the free world

Here in London I feel that I’m in the long shadow of the British Empire. You can’t see this metaphysical shadow, but it’s no less real for that. Most of you couldn’t experience it as I do, because in order to sense its presence and feel its influence you need to have at least have been brought up here or in a British colony. If you don’t comply with those conditions I think you can feel glad, because this shadow is nothing pretty or cheerful, rather it is soaked in blood. As a child I was convinced that – excepting the Cold War – I was lucky to be growing up during a period of peace, but now I know that this was an illusion. Colonial wars continued to be fought by Britain from Aden to Northern Ireland. The abuse of native populations continued into the 1970s when the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean were forcibly deported from their homeland to make way for a huge American air base on Diego Garcia. They are still forbidden to return.

But, of course, there is also much that is familiar, not only people also things that count as old friends, like the rain and the resulting greenness of the landscape. This is still idealized by a large part of the British population, as it was by generations of artists (19th century painters including the visionary Samuel Palmer), and writers (20th century novelists including the modernist Virginia Woolf). Then there is the Anti-Establishment that kicks back at the ugly politics and warmongering. I’m just about to visit Vivienne Westwood’s fashion store, and later I will go to the exhibition of David Bailey’s photography. Both definitely belonged to that Anti-Establishment, but may no longer do so. I will also be meeting Harry Eyres, an old friend who writes the Slow Lane column in the Financial Times. He, I feel sure, remains an uncomfortable voice that the Establishment would prefer to silence if they could, according to the ancient motto Rule Britannia. I will be pleased to leave the Lost Island at the edge of Europe for Germany and the 2013 wines of the Nahe, Rheingau and Rheinhessen tomorrow!

PS If you are wondering what the fate of the Chagos Islanders has to do with you ask yourself when you last used GPS. One of the five ground stations for the GPS network is on Diego Garcia. You may use it to find your way around, but for the Pentagon who developed it and run it the goal is, “putting bombs on targets” (to quote SAC).

Nobody could think up Dirk Würtz, winemaker of the Balthasar Ress estate in Hattenheim / Rheingau since 2009, if he didn’t already exist. Meeting him is like suddenly finding yourself in his movie and realizing that there’s no choice but to improvise, because (once again!) he’s forgotten to bring a copy of the script for you, then you realize that actually you’re having a ball. It turns out that the man widely regarded as Germany’s most successful wine blogger also makes Wurst, or sausage, in his spare time. Hence the title of yesterday evening’s event in the Planet Wein in the Charlottenstrasse / Berlin-Mitte: Würtz, Wein & Worscht (as Wurst is spoken in some German dialects).

OK, the group of somms, journalists and fellow travellers who gathered in this very cool store at 7:30pm yesterday didn’t actually get to sample any of Dirk’s own Worscht, but we did get to try his favorite from biodynamic Metzger Bayer in Kiedrich / Rheingau. More importantly we got to sample Dirk’s unique take on the Rheingau, German wine and his entire Weltanschauung, or world view. It began with a sentence which will shock many readers, “Riesling is an overrated grape variety!” Ouch!

It took a little while for me to grasp exactly what he was talking about, which was that he isn’t interested in the interplay of acidity with sweetnes and/or fruit that is often declared to be the most important characteristic of Riesling wines. The dry Rieslings from Balthasar Ress that he poured for us all had a mild acidity, having undergone malolactic fermentation (that converts the malic acid in wines into the softer lactic acid) and all those described below were properly dry. However, this didn’t mean they were much of a sameness nor the same of a muchness. Instead the wines Dirk poured lived up to his reputation for no-holds-barred individuality.

First came the 2012 Riesling Große Gewächse (GGs) from the Hattenheimer Nussbrunnen and Rüdesheimer Berg Schlossberg , both made from ripe grapes that were still greenish in color, to prove that even with full low acidity there’s a clear difference between the wines from sites as different as these. The Nussbrunnen is quite a mighty wine with rippling muscles and a full apricot note; the Berg Schlossberg is way sleeker and more sinewy, with more tension and underplayed power. In contrast, the 2012 “R” was made from the grapes that were golden with a violet tinge (over-ripeness with the very beginnings of botrytis) and was a much more opulent, full-trottle wine, although I found the flavor ended with something of the sleekness and coolness of the Berg Schlossberg GG. My guess is that as the wine ages this will become more obvious.

Finally came the 2011 of a wine called ‘RESSpekt’ (pictured above – yes it has a metal label!) that is made from only violet-colored, over-ripeness from the Berg Schlossberg site. As Berlin super-somm Billy Wagner said, this was a seriously massive wine for just 12% alcohol (the alcoholic content wasn’t high in any of the wines we tasted). Someone said the wine was schön, or beautiful, to which Dirk replied that, “Wein ist nicht schön! Wein ist geil oder lecker!” that is, wine isn’t beautiful, but it is horny or tasty. Sorry we couldn’t offer you a part in Dirk’s movie yesterday evening in Berlin!

Those of you who’ve followed this blog for some time already know that on May 4th, 2013 a group of friends and I planted just shy of a thousand vines of the variety Pinotin (thank you vine breeder Valentin Blattner) at the Klosterhof Töplitz wine estate just outside Berlin on the southwestern side in the state of Brandenburg. We are talking about 52° 26′ North, almost 12° further north than my other base in New York Wine City! This south facing gently sloping hillside is historic vineyard land originally planted some time in 1360 by Cistercian monks (the ones who were responsible for Clos Vougeot in Brugundy and the Steinberg in the Rheingau). Since 2012 this 6.5 acres / 2.6 hectare organic vineyard has been run by a small team under Ludolf Artymowytsch, a native of Grünstadt in the Pfalz. The most important other member is Andreas Schultze, because he’s the one who does most of the day to day work.

A couple of days ago I spent a day in Töplitz working with a hoe. I would already have reported if the Bukowski meet Müller-Thurgau story (scroll down to the last story) hadn’t demanded immediate attention. The above picture shows you what I found: young Pinotin vines that had just budded out and around them a mixed growth of “weeds”. I put that word in inverted comas, because I consider the other plants growing between the vines as important as them. The greatest possible bio-diversity – excepting the vines mortal enemies, which are mostly fungi, is the goal of Klosterhof Töplitz and I’m in complete agreement with them. It was great to see how their strategy of exposing part of the soil in alternate rows and sowing the seeds of various herbs and flowers into the openings has borne fruit. Now the couch grass (an invasive species that sucks a great deal of water out of the soil) is no longer dominant, instead being just one of many plants growing between the rows and vines. Why hoe at all? Well, I wish I didn’t have to, but young vines are not yet deep rooting and they need a helping hand in order to grow well in their first couple of years, build up a solid main stem and put down some deeper roots.

However, I didn’t just find a diversity of plants. I found many ants nests, saw ladybirds and spiders, then in the afternoon after the sun came out I also saw honeybees, bumble bees and tortoiseshell butterflies. While I worked I heard many small birds (sorry I can’t identify them from their song, but I’m no bird-watcher!), crows and wild geese. High above the vineyard several buzzards circled. When hoeing I frequently found the burrows of field mice, which is the main reason that the hawks were there. Taken together with the invisible microbial life in the soil, and some other creatures which I missed, they all form an eco-system of which I am also part. I will be a more important part of it after the first crop when I start to consume what grows here. The way things look now I feel optimistic that we’ll fill one barrique with Pinotin in fall 2015.

While I was busy with my hoe, the team was busy with the other equally unromantic end of the winegrowing process, bottling. However, this meant that I got the opportunity to taste two just bottled wines and one that would hit the bottle within hours. The latter, the dry 2013 Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris/Pinot Grigio), was delicious with a fresh melon aroma, sleek body and moderate 12% alcoholic, and a beautiful balance of bright acidity and a hint of unfermented grape sweetness. The dry 2013 Cuvée Blanc is surprisingly full in flavor for just 10.5% alcohol with a pronounced nutty character, and the 2013 Bacchus is juicy and spritzy with a sweetness that’s just a tad too much for my palate at 2.4%. Those are pretty good results for an average vintage (early fall frost knocked all the foliage off the vines before optimum ripeness could be reached) at 52° 26′ North! It all makes me feel optimistic about my project to make a powerful and complex red wine in Töplitz that while show what Brandenburg and Pinotin can do…Yes, I am crazy.

“Hi! Remember me? I’m back!” is how the beat poet Charles Bukowski said he would greet the cockroaches in hell. It was also the perfect motto for yesterday evening’s mind-expanding multi-media wine tasting event at The Cooks Connection / Berlin, ‘Bukowski meets Müller-Thurgau’. This was all the work of Frank Krüger who works for Berlin wine merchant Wein & Glas. By the way the full quote on the screen behind him says, “Life is an illusion – brought on by lack of alcohol.” And looking at Frank’s silhouette against the screen filled with that quote it really feels like Bukowski is back!

My guess is that now you’re all asking yourselves why, why, why??? Well, not only was Bukowski born in Germany, but for most of his life as a writer his books sold way better in German translation (sales of 4 million books! – how did he do that?) than in English. When Bukowski visited Germany he was not only a sensation, he also discovered Müller-Thurgau (M-T). Sure, he was an alcoholic, but he lived as one for about 40 years and they were really productive years…with the help of German MT. Obviously Bukowski and MT have something fundamental in common, because both were outsiders – as Frank pointed out, even Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine is scathing about MT – but sold well, at least in certain places. Furthermore, there’s been something of a revival of interest in the unruly school of writing to which Bukowski belongs, just as there has for MT. In the latter case the reinvention of MT as a dry white wine with quite some power and intense exotic fruit and/or herbal and mineral character by a group of mainly young winegrowers certainly helped. In Bukowski’s case it is probably just the great wheel of pop fashion turning a full mad circle. “It is not only sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll,” Frank said of Bukowski’s writing, “it is also lyrical and tender.” Not knowing it well enough I’ll have to check on that.

My guess is that many of you are now saying to yourselves, so what???  Well, wines like the 2013 ‘Belemnit’ MT trocken from Weingut Clauß in Nack (herbal and racy), the 2013 MT trocken from Weingut Schwarzer Adler (cassis note, bone dry) in Oberbergen and the 2013 Olgaberg MT trocken from the Staatsweingut in Meersburg (flinty, sleek and intensely mineral) proved that in the region of Baden MT gives character and each with a strikingly individual style. My guess is that many of you  are saying to yourselves, well that’s the exception, the one place MT works well. Well, the 2012 Sulzfeld MT trocken from Luckert in Sulzfeld (at once creamy, spicy and according to Frank, “vibrating“), the 2012 Fürstenberg MT trocken “S” from Horst Sauer in Escherndorf (“it has curves and is sexy like Marilyn Monroe,” as Paula Sidore of www.weinstory.de described it) and the wines of Christian Stahl, Winzerhof Stahl in Auernhofen proved the same can be said of Franken; a  region with a very different climate, traditions and geography.

Christian Stahl’s bone dry Müller-Thurgaus from the Hasennest site in the Tauber Valley (just 12 kilometers northwest of the historical town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber) were not familiar to many of the participants in Bukowski MT orgy and seriously fucked many of their minds. These wines more than any others we tasted embodied the Bukowski principals of going for the cerebral cortex and the crotch simultaneously, and telling it straight without worrying about the consequences. The 2012 is now  a very sexy mouthful of ripe fruit and fresh herbs, succulent and salty, and God knows what else. With much more natural acidity, and only just bottled, the 2013 is still all elbows. “Razorblade MT!” as Frank described it.

Now my guess is that for many of you the last line of defense is the claim, MT might taste good young, but it certainly won’t age! Well the 2006 MT trocken and 1995 MT trocken from Bernhard Huber in Malterdingen/Baden were both really elegant wines that still had plenty of life. The 1983 Olgaberg MT Kabinett from Staatsweingut Meersburg proved that when grown in an MT Grand Cru site (they’re different from the top sites for other grapes) then aging for a whole generation is not a problem. It was really impressive how this wine was still lively at an age when many Rieslings of the same quality level are starting to fade and dry out. It was the final, conclusive proof that Bukowski knew what he was drinking and that he was right about what he was drinking. As he often said and wrote, “don’t do it,” that is, let it happen to you without being judgmental or trying to force something upon the illusion called life.