The worst thing that can happen to a wine geek is that he/she opens a bottle that he/she has never had before and it shows so good, he/she goes on trying to find that experience again and never comes close. That is the story of the 2001 Donnhoff Niederhauser Hermannshohle Spatlese Trocken and me. I initially bought three bottles from PC in 2003 as Terry Thiese was bringing in little to no dry wine at that point. I mixed and matched with other '01 trockens and some just released '02 Donnhoff trockens. This is when Donnhoff fever was running high because of Rovani’s 97 for the sweet version of this wine. People who couldn’t even pronounce Donnhoff were buying cases of this stuff. The first bottle I had was just psychotic, silly, epiphanic wine for me. My note from that bottle follows below. Followed by that are more notes on two more bottles while having drunk some in between which I don’t have notes for, but referenced those bottles.
From 4/13/2004 - Simply a stunner. One of the most elegant wines I have ever had. So subtle you might miss it but when you get it . . . it is profound. Delicate nose of celery juice, minerals, white peach. Elegant yet penetrating nose. Juicy, ripe and phenomenally concentrated on the palate with balance that just awes you. Long , long, long and beautifully delineated. So elegant it is almost scary. Haunting I would say. This is wine made by a genius.
From 4/7/2005 - This is for me one of the benchmark German wines I have ever had the privilege of tasting. In my opinion it trumps the sweet version of this wine. Amazing purity with a stunning array of wet stone, pixie stick, tangerine, indian spice and deep mineral aromas. Constantly changing. Tremendous stone fruits with some nice citrus thrown in for tang. Truly stains your palate and has stunning elegance. Concentrated and light as a feather. Genius wine. I had one bottle that was better and one bottle just below the level of this one in the past year. This did not have the etheral featheriness of that previous bottle. But I have more so hopefully there will only be better bottles of this down the road.
From 11/16/2006 - This is a great wine and remains one of the top German wines I have ever had…albeit a bit closed at this stage in its life. Nose of celeriac, red fruits and a blast of minerals. Palate is tight, highly concentrated and pretty acidic. Tightly wound but with an amazing amount of material and purity. The length is incredible as is the mid-palate but all in all this is not fully expressive.
If I look at my notes I seem to be giving this wine more lee-way based on that first bottle’s greatness. By the time 2009 rolled around my tune changed a bit. I see I reference other bottles in the past. At this point in time, got some friends into this wine and had added 3 bottles to my stash from Winebid. I split a case with two other people from that stash on Winebid and the note below is from that stash.
From 3/10/2009 - This was dead as a doornail. Last time I had this wine, around a year ago, it was closed, or so I thought. I have had absolutely spectacular bottles of this in the past. At one time it was the greatest German dry wine I have ever had. Those days are long gone. Last night it was a shrill, medicinal, fruitless wine with too much acid. Like a skeleton of its former self. I know you are not allowed to criticize the god-like winery Donnhoff on the wine internet but people are not gonna get to the bottom of this if every time you criticize Donnhoff you get attacked by the legion of Donnhoff defenders on the wine internet. You know who you are. I bring this up because i have a lot of Donnhoff in my cellar and am officially worried about the mid to long term prospects of these wines. With the 2000 Brucke GK Spatlese and now this 01 Spat Trocken way over the hill I worry. Yes I have some nebbish Woody characteristics but this is real worry not some fake neurotic Jew stuff. I know its not the Mosel where Prum Kabinetts age 30 years but the Nahe is a great region and has a small cadre of star producers. But I am not the first person to say that Donnhoffs don’t age well and I know I won’t be the last. I know what a closed wine tastes like and I know what heat damage tastes, smells and looks like and it was not those things at all. I have had an ocean of German wine and know what they taste like when they are fading, faded or closed. This and the Oberhauser Brucke Spat GK were wines that were over the hill. Little or no fruit left on the Brucke while the Hermannshohle tasted like liquid baby aspirin which is a dead giveaway when a trocken wine is over the hill.
So going into Wednesday nights bottle I was in the negative camp on this wine. It had become like chasing a girl one can never get, but she hooked up with you when you were both drunk at a party six years ago. She doen’t remember but for you it was reference point. So I was still looking for that experience I had with the first bottle six years ago. That reference point bottle of Donnhoff that set this whole thing in motion. As this was my last bottle, I looked at it as the end of an era. If this bottle was not good, I’d be done with it.
Wine is so difficult sometimes as you try to push your personal bias’ out of the way, but sometimes you can’t. I wanted this bottle to be great. Really. Really. Bad. That was my personal bias going into it. More expectations than bias but still bias. It started off pretty nice on the nose. Nicer than the last bottle for sure. Floral, citrusy, but there was a slight aspirin thing going on. The palate was good, but not great. I made it out to be greater than it was. Bias in play. A citrus burst with minerals but somewhat hollow. Simple, but had length, but not the type of length that is good. It had a dirty, metallic, aspirin-like finish, that gradually kept getting worse and worse and lasted a long time. There was a certain charm to the wine if you were looking through beer-goggles like I was. Ultimately this died after an hour and half. Looking back, I’m not sure if it ever was alive, and if it was it had breathing and feeding tubes.
People have told me in the past there were different stashes of this wine, so that might be why the bottles varied so much. Many people in Europe think this wine is stil young and just closed right now. I am not sure about that and I’ll never be sure about anything regarding this wine. It’s the one that got away, but I did have fun with it once, but it never reproduced the magic of its early days, but I sure am glad I got to experience in those early days.