I agree this seems a little dated. 10-15 years ago the common lamentation was that spatlese had turned into auslese and auslese had turned into dessert wine. True enough, but “let spatlese be spatlese” is not the counter-reaction that most of us settled on. Rather, I think more and more people just came around to the view that the kabinett/spatlese/auslese classification was just not the box German riesling should be in anymore. Everywhere else in the world, wine is identified and sold by its terroir, not by must weight. The only reason for Germany to be any different was the sweetness variable. But once you are making GGs and feinherbs and wines labeled nothing more than “Riesling” but with 10% or 12% ABV you really don’t need a pradikat to figure out what kind of sweetness level you’re dealing with (or not dealing with). That is what many of the most exciting producers are doing these days and when you take a wine (one of Terry’s!) like Loewen 1896, which is the current and superior incarnation of what used to be Schmitt-Wagner Longuicher Maximiner Herrenberg Riesling Spatlese Feinherb, it is hard to discern what could be gained by asking the wine to present itself as “Spatlese” rather than presenting itself as the ur-expression of this special plot planted 1896 which may or may not in any given vintage fit into a spatlese box
On a tangent, I have to really disagree with this bit: “An old-style Spätlese had an embedded sweetness that found the sweetness already in your food (as many savory dishes entail sugar in some form) and made for a delightful shock of compatibility. Today’s sugar bombs require the cook to add incremental sweetness to the food to prevent a grotesque dysphasia in the combo.” Sweetness in wine harmonizes with contrasting elements in food (like saltiness or spice), not with more sweetness. I’d never open sweet wine to “find” more sweetness in food and adding sugar to food to drink with a sugar-bomb wine is indeed grotesque (but who in the world does that??). That “sweet tooth” rep that’s followed Terry around was not wholly unearned.