2019 Grosser Ring Auctions

WINE TALK
21

Added to my bid sheet last minute, and glad I did. Not a producer we see much in Texas, but I heard a lot of very positive buzz about his 2018 auction offerings. Guessing the low price might be due in part to quantity offered combined with the fact they do not come to auction every year?

More general question to those of you who attended and said the wines were not as good as last year. Curious for more specifics on what drives that impression.

I ask because I have tasted a number of 2018s and have generally found them very beautiful. Certainly not powerhouses like 2015 or 2017, and not necessarily even as opulent as 2016 can be. But I found them quite alluring and refreshingly “classic” after 3 vintages that had their individual extremes. The more 2017s I taste, the more of an outlier that vintage seems to be- though certainly with very powerful wines of great potential.

Did you all find the 2018s problematic in any way, or just not as powerful and ageworthy as the 17s and 15s were?

22

Tom -
My impressions of 2018 are pretty much the polar opposite of yours. Outside of the auction I’ve tasted very little, and as a reference point I think 2017 is wonderful and 2016 is a little better, and I prefer both to 2015.

As for 2018, it’s hard to pinpoint what is problematic because there is so much variation (even within a single producer) and when the wines go wrong there wasn’t any single wrong. But I guess what I’d say is that it seems like mosel was really hot in 2018 for a really long time, and different people dealt with it in different ways and were more or less successful depending on what they did, but that it was hard to escape. Some of the wines seem almost tropical, some have too much caramel, many are a little flabby and almost all could use a little more acidity. There wasn’t a lot of botrytis, but the wines came off as heavy.

I should also note - there was quite a lot of split opinion. I spent about the same amount as I always do at the auction and focused on the wines that I like, but with the exception of the Prum spatlese and the Willi spatlese, I could hear someone around me pan every wine that I enjoyed (and the cheers for Willi were much more subdued than usual, notwithstanding the crazy price for the auslese). Schloss Lieser seemed to underperform a little - I’ve never been less taken with the doctor, and while the kab was fine, it was heavy. I liked and bought the W-H LGK, and thought it was a steal compared to the Prum version, but others around me hated it. I liked Clemens Busch but the price reflects what people thought and it had an unusual flowery note that one could interpret as good or bad I suppose. Prum did well, although I thought the goldkap was the best wine and that the LGK was less than a step up than it usually is. The TBA was really something, but almost seemed an odd addition to the auction given its drinking window. I thought the Haart TBA was uninspiring and really overdone. I thought lauer has the best wines of the auction and bought many, although I thought the spat 24 was way behind the 23 and atypical. I bought zilliken although the spat was the most tropical wine in the building and all the wines were very sweet. Von Hovel didn’t really sell. I usually like the scharz wines but thought they were marked by the vintage and probably should have been picked a little earlier this year, but took a drop given the paltry prices. Grunhaus was good, not great. The auslese felt expensive for what they were. I thought the Egon goldkap was not very good and although I’m having trouble interpreting my scattershot notes on it I know that at first I thought it might be flawed. The kab was an easy pass as it had a cheesy, funky note to begin and was fairly baroque at this stage. Not what I want in kab. I thought the Haag wines were decent but not worth the prices. I only tasted a few of the GG and was not impressed.

Anyway, this type of tasting can be misleading because it’s such a quick snap shot and so many variables other than the quality of the wine can affect one’s evaluation. There were more wines than usual that struck me as vastly different from the morning tasting to the afternoon tasting. All could have used a little more air. Again, I bought a good amount as my negativity for the vintage is more relative than absolute, but I could see those with a cellar full of mosel Riesling happily skipping the vintage altogether, and I could see backfilling on 2016 as well. I’m happy to own everything I bought and think that growers performed admirably in a tough vintage. In terms of auction wines I couldn’t live without this year, there was nothing.

23

Thank you Alex- appreciate all the detail. For my part I will confess that in the tastings of 2018s I have attended- it was same issue as you note in the sense that it was a very quick snapshot and subject to concerns about airing time.

Time will tell. I saw many of the wines I tasted right after bottling or right before- so that could account for much as well.

24

I recommend Pettenthal GG and Schubertslay Kabinett from Keller this week-end in Bad Kreuznach. Fair to say I haven’t tasted Schubertslay, but Pettenthal. Also 2018 EMT by Wagner-Stempel is outstanding.


2018 Keller PETTENTHAL GG auction wine

A monolith. Best Dry German Riesling, period.
Such dirty, spice, smokiness and depth. liquid cocaine
Like last year, everyone was thrilled about this wine. 100/100

IMG_8322.jpg

25

I’m sure they are great, but we are talking about a kabinett that is gonna sell for more than 400 euro and a GG that will likely sell for more than 500 euro. I buy lots of Keller but I don’t mind missing the auction wines given the premium. And I’m not sure that any of them are better than the morstein.

26

Some thoughts:

2018 is a vintage to taste before buying (always a good idea)!

Karthäuserhof and Von Hövel had a hard time selling any of their wines. There was an awkward moment during the sale of lot 44 which the auctioneer (winemaker at Von Hövel) did not want to sell at the ausgebot price…

Egon Müllers Kabinett did not break last years record price and to be honest, the wine was less good than last years! However his Auslese Goldkapsel did sell for a higher price and for me was also slightly less good than last years, still a top notch wine though!

J.J. Prüm’s 2013 TBA was the best wine on the Auction for me. Their 2018 portfolio was overall very good.

Geltz-Zilliken performed well also, some fair deals to be had.

Willi Schaefer always manages to have one of the best noses of the Auction and makes delicious clear and pure wines.

Schloss Lieser did very well again (bias), his Graacher Domprobst Kabinett was amazing. The Doctor perhaps slightly less good than previous vintage, but need to buy it anyway to keep my vertical going. His GG Doctor in Magnum (21 offered) sold for a whopping € 700,- ex.!

Fritz Haag pretty consistent as always.

Peter Lauer slightly less good than previous year, did buy the Feils Fass 24 Spätlese and the Kupp Auslese which stuck out to me. Same goes for the lineup of Maximin Grünhaus, which I bought some of last year but none this year.

The already mentioned Clemens Busch wines went for very low prices, especially the Kabinett which was very good imo.

The Auction needs a new format, because the pre-tasting is from 09:00-11:00 o’clock and than it starts at 13:00 o’clock and this year we were finished at 19:30 o’ clock if I’m not mistaking, which is a pretty long sit…They should develop an app where every buyer can bid live?!

27

Well I hope i like them better than some of the people posting because i think i got quite a few. I bid on a few through von bodem and i have a friend who was there bidding. I think i got some of haag’s kabinett and spatlese, schaefer’s and prum’s spatlese, clemens-busch kabinett and gka, grunhaus kabinett, lauer’s kab and both spatlesen, schloss saarstein gka and zilliken spatlese.

Phew! I hope I don’t get too many of any. Good thing it is my grand niece’s birth year!

28

I can’t wait for October’s monthly check in thread.

29

Alex - yikes. Doesn’t bode well if that’s your opinion of the auction wines, which are supposed to be the best of the best. I’ll tread carefully.

30

Well, I didn’t skip the vintage. I bought quite a bit at the auction and a boatload of non-auction wines as usual. My buying strategy shifted quite a bit from normal however as I typically aim to spend my dollars on the mind-blowing higher pradikat wines that are hard to find outside of the auction. There were only a few of those I wanted this year. I took a good bit of kab and spat. And I’m happy with everything I bought. I don’t think it’s a vintage that many would feel like they have to have and I think that within a singles producer’s wines there were some surprises.

31

What does a 6L German bottle look like?

32

9/10 it’s Champagne shaped. But I have seen a slightly squished German flute version.

That 2018 is a mixed vintage shouldn’t surprise anyone. All reputable critics have been saying the same since April.

33

How does this auction work? Are there large batches of some wines and you are bidding for some number of bottles?

34

Craig. Check out the MFW primer.

It’s complex.

35

Alex - You are way off on the GG and the Schubertslay could go for an insane price as well.

36

Really? You think the GG is going for less than 500? Can we bet a bottle on that?

37

No he means you are way off that the Keller Pettenthal GG is selling for a lot more than € 500,- actually!

38

Well, last time I checked “more than 500” included all amounts in excess of 500. I’m pretty familiar with Keller auction prices and I know what the pettenthal went for last year and in 2016. I wouldn’t be surprised if both go for over 1000. So not to quibble, but all covered by what I said.

39

Than I probably misread Alex, sorry about that. So today we will see if Egon Müller’s Kabinett record price will be caught up by Keller’s Riesling Kabinett Alte Reben Schubertslay…Probably so, because the number of bottles auctioned are a lot less and the Ausrufpreis is twice as high already!

40

^The Keller schubertslay kabi is gonna shatter egon’s record. It was all anyone was talking about. I thought my bid - which was well above Egon’s kabi record - was high until I heard what others were bidding. No reason kabi can’t go as high as GG in my view.

I’m interested to see if this starts to have an effect on other producers’ prices. I think that if Julian Haart were a Vdp member and brought wines to auction, you’d see some very high prices and a lot of excitement. It will also be interesting to see if those producers who have traditionally shied away from bringing a kabinett to auction might consider doing so. A Prum or Willi auction kabi would undoubtedly be a hot item.

At the same time, I think some of the prices reflect auction hype and heat-of-the-moment bidding. The lots are so small that you get some distortion. Keller’s 2017 pettenthal is still out there for close to the auction price, and I was talking to someone who told me that he bought lots of Egon TBA at past auctions and recently tried to sell for good prices (much, much less than current release price for the non-auction TBA) and had no takers.

A