For a friend’s birthday, we dug into our cellars. It was a good line-up: 2004 Dom Perignon (youngish, no DP nuttiness, but good); '16 PYCM Chassagne - Abbaye de Moreot (wowser! stunning! and I guessed PYCM on the first sniff); '04 G. Conterno - Cascina Francia (oddly drinkable, not very nebbiolo-ish – some of us thought Bordeaux at first, then I thought Northern Rhone from a warm year); '70 Pichon-Lalande (really nice, though on the downhill slope; bretty, merlot showing, fabulous nose; thinning a tad; I guessed '86 Lynch Bages; recently purchased on WineBid).
Then we got to my wine: JJ Prum, 1999 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spatlese (AP 2 576 511 7 01). What an odd duck this bottle was. Faint sulfur/gasoline note, with some celery and parsley notes. Pineapple, apricot, lychee on the nose – not your typical Middle Mosel fruit profile. The vege/celery/parsley notes were apparent in the mouth, too. Kind of low on acid, so the sweetness was really front and center, though the wine was not viscous. Apricot and pineapple dominated in the mouth. Apricot followed through. The finish was quite sweet, low on acid and a bit short (probably because of the low acid).
If this had been all syrupy, I wouldn’t have been surprised, since '99s came off that way for a long time, but it wasn’t heavy or thick – just a somewhat overly sweet medium-bodied wine. I haven’t opened any '99s in a couple of years, because I was waiting for them to come into balance. This seemed to be losing a bit at the back, and is still too dominated by sweetness. Perhaps it will be better in five or ten years, but nothing about its showing tonight would make me think that, only Prum’s track record.
A disappointment, then. Maybe 88/89 points. Several others there were similarly disappointed, too. One has some in his cellar and is going to pull a bottle to compare. I have two more bottles. (The cork had deteriorated a bit, but it came out cleanly with an ah-so, and there were no signs of oxidation.)
Historical note: I was in Berlin in September 2000 and stumbled on a big tasting run by the VDP in a hall on the Unter den Linden, near the Brandenburg Gate, with dozens of good producers. The '99s that day showed very sweet. Manfred Prum was pouring at his table and I said that the '99s generally seemed low in acid (and I meant his, too). He said the acids were there – just masked by the sweetness.
I’m not one to second guess Manfred Prum but, in the end, maybe my instincts were right.