Category Archives: I Am Wine

2011 Rivaner from Karl H. Johner for € 8

What? A Rivaner as wine of the month at STUART PIGOTT RIESLING GLOBAL instead of a Riesling? Rivaner is the alias of Müller-Thurgau and MT is part of the enemy!, or? OK MT has a bad reputation because of a lot of sweet schlock wines – Liebfraumilch & Co – that were produced from it in vast quantities back during that distant geological epoch which was the 1970s and ’80s. Winegrowers took the huge yields which MTs genetics and the liberal use of chemical fertilizer made possible. The Rivaner alias was introduced during the 1980s to try and reposition the variety, that is to pull it out of the mire it was tuck in.

Karl Heinz Johner, who founded Germany’s first garage winery in Bischoffingen/Baden back in 1985, was one of the first winemakers to not only use the Rivaner name, but also to completely reinvent the wine. He cut yields, picked the grapes fully ripe and barrel-fermented the wine. The result was a seriously pleasant shock the first time I encountered it 25 years ago. It was also the original inspiration for my first experiment in winemaking, a dry MT I produced in 2009 from ten rows of vines in the remote Tauber Valley borrowed from Christian Stahl of Winzerhof Stahl in Auernhofen/Franken.

Like my wine, the Johners dry 2011 Rivaner has almost none of the normal MT muscat type aroma, and has a generous alcoholic content (13.5%). The creamy-yeasty note and a touch of vanilla lead into a full and supple wine, which is at once rich and clean. In fact, I think this is the sort of taste a lot of people who say they like Chardonnay really want, but almost mever find at this price point. Today this wine sees much less oak than it used to, so congratulations are due to Patrick Johner for reinventing his father’s reinvention of a grape that remains on the wrong side of the tracks. Oh, and the website is really worth visiting.

2011 Rivaner is € 8 direct from

Weingut Karl H. Johner

Gartenstraße 20

79235 Vogtsburg-Bischoffingen / Baden

Tel.: (49) / 0 7662 / 6041

E-Mail: info@johner.de

Web: www.johner.de

2011 Riesling “SPONTAN”, € 9.50 from Lubentiushof

Often at STUART PIGOTT RIESLING GLOBAL I ask lots of probing questions and seek hard answers to them, but here I just shoot from the hip trying to keep quality, value for money and interest in mind. Terrassenmosel winegrower Andreas Barth’s new wine, Riesling “SPONTAN”, scores high on all three of those points. Interest is the most important, so let’s get down to the nitty-gritty right away. For those not used to serious Mosel Rieslings the yeasty aroma of this wine might come as a serious shock. For hard-core Mosel addicts like me this is just the funk of a youthful wine that wasn’t manipulated in the cellar. In fact, when it’s married to fruit aromas like these (blackcurrant and white peach) I find this side of the wine positively funkadelic. It also tastes wonderfully juicy, spritzy, and invigoratingly dry, curving out of the bottle into the glass and from there across the palate with alarming ease; quality, quality, quality! The price is friendly too, by which I mean that if Heymann-Löwenstein (the Terrassenmosel’s number one) stood on the label instead of little-known Lubentiushof, then it would be more expensive.

The wine’s name is a 21^st century Flexi-German play on words. Spontan means spontaneous or spontaneously, also spontaneous fermentation – full German name Spontangärung, or short Sponti – meaning fermentation without the safety net which adding selected yeast in powdered form – Reinzuchthefe – provides. Selected yeasts are genetically homogenous (some products contain several strains of yeast, but each of them is genetically homogenous) and are therefore rather predictable in their behavior. They can make the wines they ferment taste rather predictable too, though this certainly isn’t the inevitable result of their use. In the English-speaking wine world people often talk about “wild yeast fermentation”, but the idea that each batch of grapes ferments with its own vineyard specific yeast seldom has much to do with microbiological reality in the cellar. When Spontangärung works as spectacularly well it does in this wine, then usually the cellar has developed its own distinctive flora of yeasts which contribute to the house wine style. That situation plus ripe, clean Riesling grapes, a minimum of cellar technology and a maximum of patience are Andreas Barth’s secrets.

Oh, and I love the cool label!

2011 Riesling “Spontan” is € 9.50 direct from

Susanne & Andreas Barth

Kehrstrasse 16

56332 Niederfell / Terrassenmosel

Tel.: (49) / 0 2607 / 8135

E-Mail: weingut@lubentiushof.de

Web: www.lubentiushof.de

Elbling Crémant from Stephan Steinmetz for €9

Riesling is the traditional wine grape on the Mosel, right? Wrong. Riesling certainly has a really long history on the Mosel and has been dominant in the vineyards of the most famous wine villages in the Mosel Valley since the second half of the 18^th century, but the main grape it pushed out, Elbling, has not disappeared entirely. On the Obermosel, or Südliche Wein-Mosel (Southern Wine Mosel), as the region has recently begun calling itself, Elbling has been cultivated uninterruptedly since the Romans brought the grape to the region almost two thousand years ago. And if you taste the sparkling Elbling Crémant from Stephan and Petra Steinmetz in Wehr/Mosel you’ll quickly realize why. This grape seems predestined for sparkling wine production on account of its subtle apple and citrus aromas, moderate sugar content (which results in a moderate alcoholic content in the finished product) and naturally high acidity content. The second fermentation and extended lees contact in the bottle of the Champagne method transform Elbing, coaxing a whole range of new aromas from it – in this case a strawberry note as well as the bready notes from the yeast – and give it a creaminess that beautifully balances the crisp acidity and bubbles. The 11,5% alcoholic content underlines its light and charming personality and compared with it most “cheaper” Champagnes, which are never actually cheap, taste rather clumsy.

The limestone soil here – there’s no slate and little Riesling upstream of the Saar’s confluence with the Mosel close to the city of Trier – is not only the reason that Elbling has survived here. It also helps the Steinmetzs make a pretty serious Spätburgunder / Pinot Noir, but more about that another time.

Elbling Crémant is € 9 direct from

Stephan & Petra Steinmetz

Am Markusbrunnen 6

54439 Wehr / Südliche Wein-Mosel

Tel.: (49) / 0 6583 / 2 34

E-Mail: info@stephan-steinmetz.de

Web: www.stephan-steinmetz.de

2011 Lagrein Rosé

Schreckbichl

€ 7.90

For several years, together with Hammers Weinkostbar, one of Berlin and Germany’s best winebars, I’ve been organizing blind tastings under the name ‘Wein Lab’ for the Wein Hilft, or wine helps, charity (see www.weinhilft.de, though sadly only in German at the moment). Our latest tasting was in search of the world’s best still rosé wine, and it was a real roller-coaster ride. The official winner, i.e. the group favorite, was the 2011 Montfort Spätburgunder BA – yes, a German Pinot Noir dessert wine! – from Klostermühle Odernheim in Odernheim/Nahe. It had the most beautiful Pinot nose, but was not exactly a refreshing summer wine, being just too sweet and too concentrated for that purpose (though beautifully balanced in this style). My personal favorite for summer refreshment was the 2011 Lagrein Rosé from the Schreckbichl co-operative winery in the mainly German-speaking Südtirol (Alto Adige) province of Italy. It looked like a pale-colored red wine, but combined beautiful red and black berry aromas with some real richness and awesome freshness. It is also moderate in alcoholic content for a rosé with this much flavor (12,5%) and superb value for money. May the summer be with you!

2011 Lagrein Rosé from Schreckbichl is €7,90 from

www.belvini.de

 2011 „Steinwiege“ Riesling trocken

Schnaitmann

€ 8.60

Riesling from Württemberg? Surely the Mosel, Rhine and Nahe – the three valleys often declared to be the Homelands of Riesling – have enough exciting wines to offer that it isn’t necessary to go to a leafy suburb of Stuttgart – the Homeland of Mercedes Benz – to find a good Riesling? The other reaction I frequently hear to recommendations like this one is blunter: huhh? I take that to mean are you serious?Possibly also how do you spell that? But then when they taste the wine there’s a sudden switch to Wow!

The truth is that the Great God of wine did not ordain that Riesling may only achieve greatness on stony soils in those Three Holy Valleys, and there are many other places in Germany and elsewhere on Planet Wine that my favorite grape can give great wines, also in Württemberg. The first prerequisite for this is that the climate and soil are suitable, the second that the winegrower adapt cultivation of the vine and making of the wine to those specific conditions.

That’s what Rainer Schnaitmann has been doing since he completed his studies at the wine „uni“ at Geisenheim/Rheingau, returned home to Fellbach in 1997 and resigned from the local co-operative in order to go solo as a winemaker. It didn’t take him long to crack how to make great red wines and stunning Sauvignon Blanc pretty fast and now he has nailed Riesling. This is as racy and minerally-spicy a dry Riesling as you’ll find anywhere in the Holy Valleys: Wild Thing, you make my heart sing!

2011 „Steinwiege“ Riesling trocken is € 8.60 from

Weingut Rainer Schnaitmann

Untertürkheimer Strasse 4

70734 Fellbach/Württemberg

Tel: (49) / 0 711 57 46 16

Email: info@weingut-schnaitmann.de

Web: www.weingut-schnaitmann.de