02 was a soft vintage lacking acid. I have had some 02s recently that weren’t entirely over the hill, but had seen better days a few years ago. I don’t see any real reason to hold longer even though it’s a GKA.
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I had a couple bottles of the non auction version of this wine within the last year. The cork didn’t do its job very well on one bottle, which was still very good but a bit dull. The other bottle was great. I wouldn’t be at all worried about the auction bottling (aside from flawed bottle or closure).
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Looking back at prices, I think the thing that surprises me most about the pricing at this auction is the lack of correlation between the MFW scores and relative auction pricing, which Lieser /Schaefer/Prum Spatlese being the best examples. I think of MFW as market movers and much of the increase last year feels related to the incredible scores they gave, but this year there seems to be no clear relationship.
I think the hype around the 2021 vintage as an amazing kabi/spat vintage got a lot of people into the game, and their bidding was influenced by MFW scores. This year, with no vintage hype, those people just didn’t really bid, so nothing for MFW to influence.
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My group and I were worried about the score for the Adam Spatlese (96) but it really didn’t do much to drive the pricing. When your score spread at the Mosel auction is 6 points between Van Volxem’s 91s and the Schaefer Spatlese at 97 you develop the problem Australian buyers had in the late oughts… so many high scoring wines make it hard to pick winners and losers if you’re just looking at scores.
Thanks,
Zachary
I’m struggling to see how “people just didn’t bid” explains anything about the relationship between the high price for Prum, where people clearly did bid and bid high, and the higher-scoring wines I mentioned.
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Fewer bottles. If you assume that every year there is a knowledgeable pool of bidders with preferences that override scores and they are good for 320 bottles, they will hold prices steady / up 10% (or more in a good year where they may increase their quantities/prices). Then there is a pool that I will call “fair weather fans”. They may enter only in a “good” year and buy based on scores. Assuming their income distribution spans the spectrum, they can drive lot prices. For larger lots, the pricing increase is not as pronounced, but it is for smaller lots.
I think the market is a bit more complicated than that (and obviously the “knowledgeable” pool will also deviate based on vintage), but I think this rough model does explain a good portion of it.
Maybe - although if you look at the score distribution the 97 for Willi and 96 for Adam feel particularly meaningful. I also think readers have a pretty good sense of what a 91 means from MFW.
The problem with MFW auction scores are that 90 - 93 point range is pretty bloated in MFW nowadays (plenty of 10 - 20€ wines on every issue in that range) so under 93 point auction wine is not very impressive on paper anymore even if that’s a really good wine in reality. And that also tells how much the quality of wines have rose in M-S-R and gap between auction and regular bottlings sunk in say last decade so why bother to bid especially if you have no opportunity to taste the wine that’s gonna cost at least double, or usually way more more, than regular bottling.
I think 91/92 on an auction wine from MFW is and always has been fair warning.
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I don’t think of 2002 as a low acid vintage unless you are comparing it to really high acid vintages. I have had two 2002 auction spatlesen (Friz Haag’s and Zilliken’s) in the past month and they were outstanding, particularly the Haag. Of course, I am the original owner (from retail - Premier Cru!), having acquired them in 2004, and they have been perfectly stored since.
I expect that gka to be delicious.
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Yeah I guess I’m just spoiled by '01s. Every time I have a '98, '99, '02, even '05, they are good, but it just leaves me wanting more. The '01 Prum WS GKA we had this summer isn’t even an auction bottling and still is in the top 10 wine experiences I’ve had this year, which includes a list of some pretty heavy hitters. Nothing from '02 or those other vintages can create that kind of experience.
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We had the 2001 Prum Wehlener Auslese at a cheese tasting on Sunday. A beautiful showing, and far and away the wine that worked best with the cheeses.
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I get that. I loaded up on 2001 Prum wines, including the gka and both the spatlese and auslese auction wines - at one time, I owned more than 6 cases, which for me is a lot. Beautiful wines (had the GH auslese last week - delightful) and frankly wish I’d bought more.
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100%. There is nothing soft about 2002 Fritz Haag.
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In fairness, the person who started this discussion asked about an '02 Emrich-Schonleber Auslese, so perhaps the statement about '02 being soft might apply to the Nahe (but I’m assuming '02 was as classic in the Nahe as the Mosel, but I defer to people with more experience about that).
Honest question: assuming proper storage, would an auslese made by a good producer in a solid, classic vintage like '02 ever be truly over-the-hill at 20 years old? That doesn’t seem that old for auslese.
There’s nothing “soft” about 2002. If 2001 hadn’t happened, 2002 would be very highly regarded. It just got caught in a very long shadow. 2002s are generally delicious now, but in no danger of any imminent decline.
I say this having tasted widely in 2002 both in Germany and at home.
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If David says this, then I must be right!
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Bummer. It’s so far from 2001 that if it’s solid second tier, I have to wonder how I may feel about any other vintage than the best of the best. Which makes me triple guess all these '22s I just bought because allocations were soft.
The “2002 is an over-the-hill, soft vintage” take was very odd, to put it mildly.
I mean, there are other German rieslings worth drinking outside of 2001 and 2019.
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