Since I enjoy picking the mind of the many German aficionados on this board, I am curious to know what has happened with some of the vineyards in let’s say Erden, Urzig, and Bernkastel that at one point in time seemed to make very good wine but for some reason or another we just hear little about these days (gross generalization here as I have no idea if people in Germany or elsewhere talk about these vineyards all the time).
The ones the I am largely thinking about are Urziger Wurtzgarten, Berkastler Lay, Berncastler Doctor (I know JJ Prum still makes great wine from Bernkastler Badstube), Erdener Treppchen, and Erdener Pralat.
Is their seeming non inclusion in because of the wineries that make wine from those sites, or is it because the sites just are producing as good of grapes as they previously were for whatever reason (climate or otherwise)(assuming they ever made great grapes).
Curious to get people’s thoughts on this as I always seem to pass over wines from these sites for whatever reason and maybe I am missing out on truly great wine.
It can’t be as simple as that though. For me it has always been the producers that I have shied away from - Dr. Loosen, Thanisch, Bergweiler, Monnchoff. Maybe I am just naive and missing the boat but I rarely even see these sites mentioned when discussing pradikat wines in the Mosel.
I follow the German discussions and my impression is that David is right. There is a lot of talking about dry (mainly the Große Gewächs) and red wine (yes, even from the Mosel). So if you hear something of the old, famouse vineyards, its about which on is better, the GG from Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr or the GG Piesporter Goldtröpfchen from R. Haart or the GG Prälat from Dr. Loosen. In this context the vineyards become some kind of brand and there are some new producers in fashion (Steinmetz, Julian Haart, Adam).
I feel like the winemaker is at least as important in Germany as in California [where losing the superstar winemaker can devastate a cult winery].
For me, the great enigma is Paul Anheuser in the Nahe - they’re an ancient firm, and they ought to be sitting on some of the most outstanding soil in all of Germany, and yet the best of their wines struggle to be even mediocre.
For years now, I’ve wondered what a Helmut Donnhoff or a Tim Shafer Frohlich could do with that Anheuser terroir.
My recollection is that Hermann Donnhoff started off as something like a peach farmer, or a pear farmer, and that he only took up grapes as a hobby on the side.
So if Helmut Donnhoff could turn his Dad’s peach/pear/whatever holdings into some of the greatest grape vineyards in the world [kinda like Henri Jayer and that old cabbage/artichoke patch in Vosne Romanee], then imagine what Donnhoff might be able to do if he had access to really historical dirt, like what they have at Anheuser.
Actually, something really strange is happening down here - pretty much all of the retailers/wholesalers, who used to take part in the 3-tier system, have either gone bankrupt, or have radically altered their business models.
A year or two ago, the last store in the area to keep a healthy stock of Donnhoff on the shelves was bought out by a new investment team, which quickly gutted the wine department, and switched it over to this model of high-margin direct-import no-name labels that a good [-er- a “good”] salesman can shove down the throats of the poor naïve gullible blue-haired bloody-mary AARP market segment [who will purchase whatever a, ah, “good” salesman tells them to purchase].
There was another, smaller store, down the street, which kept a much more modest inventory of Donnhoff on the shelves, but about six months ago, they went out of business altogether.
Point being that in this economy, folks just can’t afford the standard 3-tier markups anymore.
And we’re actually one of the stronger markets in the country.
In the really weak markets, it must be all “Cupcake” and “Barefoot” these days.
This question of German vineyards which no longer rise to the level of their historical standards reminds me a great deal of the situation with the musical instruments.
Germany ought to absolutely “PWN” the market for musical instruments - there ought to be musical instrument houses in Germany which are the BMWs and the Mercedes Benzes of their market segments - but apparently the Germans shipped so much crap throughout the 20th Century that [especially with the violins] they opened up a huge opportunity for newcomers, and the Chinese [of all people] moved right in to fill the vacuum.
Particularly a Chinese outfit called “Eastman”* - Eastman has become so massive that [if I understand it correctly] they’ve bought out all the old German houses, and they’re using those old German labels as nothing more than marketing terms to mask the fact that the instruments are now shipping from China.
Anyway, the Germans had better hope that the Chinese don’t find any terroir there in Central Asia which is free of Pierce’s Disease and which is amenable to growing quality Riesling.
Because, if they do, then in another 20 years, a label like “Paul Anheuser” might just be a marketing term for Riesling grown somewhere in Outer Mongolia.
*Presumably they figured that “Eastman” was sufficiently generic that they could plausibly argue that, “Hey, we’re Men, and we’re from The East, and, oh yeah, ‘Chinaman’? Dass rayciss!”
Whereas if they had called themselves “Juilliard”, then they knew that they would have gotten smacked with a trademark lawsuit before the sun set that evening.
Not a huge fan of Meulenhof but Merkelbach and esp. Christoffel make some awfully good wines from these vineyards. However, I must say that I don’t buy as much of there as I used to do. A lot of other producers interest me more.
Try Lieser and it will quickly go back into fashion for you. I am drinking a lot more wines from Brauenberg in the last few years - mostly Schloss Lieser.
Howard - I am in the same boat as you. This begs the question I think that if say a producer like Steinmetz, or Adam, or Weiser Kunstler made wines from one of these vineyards would you start drinking them more? I suppose it is as much of the producer as the vineyard after all for me.
Nathan, I don’t think your musical instrument comparison is very apt.
I further don’t share your view that the Paul Anheuser estate has particularly great vineyard holdings. Around Bad-Kreuznach, there’s very little slate, melaphyr, porphyr and quartz that you find in the parts more to the east along the Nahe river. It’s mostly clay and argil soils around Bad-Kreuznach.
And by the way, the history of winemaking in the Dönnhoff family goes back to the 18th century. The same is true for Emrich-Schönleber. Nobody in Germany talks about the Anheuser estate, it’s irrelevant to those interested in quality wine. And I’ve never heard that the estate has ever been famous for its wines in recent history.
It’s true though that some once world famous vineyards have lost some of their glory: Erdener Prälat, Bernkasteler Doctor, Erbacher Marcobrunn, Hattenheimer Steinberg and to some extent also the vineyards along the “Roter Hang” in Nierstein nach Nackenheim. One reason for this is climate change. While those vineyards were famous and their land was expensive because the grapes got ripe and produced high oechsle degrees more consistently than in other vineyards, ripeness is no longer a problem in very many German vineyards. To the contrary, making lower oechsle wines such as Kabinetts and Spätlese with that divine balance between sweetness and acidity becomes more and more difficult in many vineyards that get more sun than others.
And another reason is of course that not all producers make equally good wine out their vineyards. Prälat, Doctor, Marcobrunn and Steinberg are very closely attached to a few producers: Loosen, Christoffel-Prüm (now Christoffel Jr.), Karl Erbes, Dr. Hermann and a few others in the Prälat; Wegeler, the two Thanisch estates and von Kesselstatt in the Doctor, only the Staatsweingüter in the Steinberg and Schloss Schönborn, the Staatsweingüter, Langwerth von Simmern and a few others in the Marcobrunn. If one or two of those don’t get everything out of the terroir, the reputation of the vineyard obviously suffers. However, in the hands of the good producers, these vineyards still produce very enjoyable and world-class wines in my view. The Bernkasteler Doctor Riesling Kabinett and Spätlese from Thanisch, Erben Thanisch in more crisp years such as 2004 and 2008 for example is pure Middle Mosel magic.
Where are people getting the sense that these vineyards have fallen out of favor? Is it just about price because Christoffel spatlese is cheaper than someone’s GG?
Very possible they may not have fallen out of favor at all. It seems that as was mentioned above some of the “less popular” aspect of these vineyards has to do with the producers that have holdings in these vineyards. But again that might be an overstatement as well and in fact these producers are still very popular and make great wine. Largely trying to figure out why Wehlener and Braunberger and Graacher even Piesporter and such are far more often gravitated towards versus some of these other other vineyards that at one point (and maybe still to this day) were on par with the latter vineyards.
Seems an easy conclusion is the producers of wines from Urzig, Erden, and Bernkastel just get overlooked by myself and others alike.