From a personal viewpoint, I stopped buying after 2021. Very little to extrapolate, but a couple of German collectors I know are also on a short hiatus. Like me, they bought huge amounts of 2019/2020 and again ‘21, that at least for the time being, I have not just enough but far too much German wine.
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don’t know what it means but these are some of my favorite producers. almost all are on my short list
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broader is a good word. not in a unfocused pejorative sense but in a golden embracing broadness. really balanced wines with an openness. just had the 2019 auction kabinett at dinner. was soulful.
I think Robert makes a lot of good points that the explanations for this can be varying and producer-specific. At the 10,000-foot level, though, Germany moreso than elsewhere seems very susceptible to the winds of fashion. In a very short span of time, a whole lot of people’s buying habits shifted from predicate wines to GGs to, well, the current anarchy where many of the best wines are neither. There are also a ton of exciting producers that didn’t exist 10 years ago. As well as importer/retail sources that didn’t exist 10 years ago that aren’t going to be relevant without bringing new producers to the market.
FWIW,
- Anyone ditching Julian Haart please send some my way - I love them but never see them for sale.
- Terry Theise’s prose is what got me into A.J. Adam
- I am guilty as charged on Shafer-Frohlich, haven’t bought any since 2015 on account of my own shift away from predicate wines and GGs
- I have no explanation for a drop in Steinmetz - this lineup never fails to excite
- I have no explanation for a drop in Falkenstein either, since the only reason my own Falkenstein purchases are down is because you have to line up behind the velvet rope to try getting some. I doubt we’ve reached “nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
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Interesting. Love data like this. Looked at our CT data and get a different picture.
Top 12 held 2022 German, with the ranks for '21, 20, 19, 18:
- Weingut Keller (1,1,1,1) (there is 10-40% more Keller than any #2, lol)
- Hofgut Falkenstein (3,4,5,14)
- Julian Haart (6,5,23,22)
- Dönnhoff (2,2,2,2)
- Schäfer-Fröhlich (4,6,8,5)
- Peter Lauer (7,9,12,14)
- Willi Schaefer (15,7,6,6)
- Wittmann ( 8,11,10,9)
- Emrich-Schönleber (11,13,13,23)
- Dr. Hermann (25,32,35, >70)
- Joh. Jos. Prüm (5,3,3,3)
- Weingut Günther Steinmetz (20, 30,53,>70)
Falkenstein and Haart keep moving up. S-F holding pretty steady. Steinmetz popped up. The Prum drop might just be that '22s aren’t fully in market. Dr. Hermann is the one really blowing up.
Others. S-L holds pretty steady 14-16th spot. W-K has fallen from 13-15 to 30s. Vollenweider in the 30s steady. C-B has fallen to the mid 30s from the mid-10s. AJ Adam has gone up from 30s to lower 20s. Becker is consistent but our numbers are low, so rank is variant.
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The vintage reports were always much less comprehensive. The catalogs gave a more in depth picture, and Adam was always highly regarded.
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I use very little offsite storage (and none in Manhattan) but for me it’s a huge glut of Riesling (and all other wine) in my cellar. I will likely purchase under 100 bottles of 2022, and even less going forward, just due to the need to drink up rather than build up. Buying 6 bottles or so from Shafer-Frohlich or Falkenstein is more than enough even if I usually bought 12 or 24 per vintage. Even cutting back on Dönnhoff, which is a seismic event at Schloss Bueker.
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Exactly - I want to support producers but my lack of purchasing 22s isn’t about the vintage, but that I have so much from the prior 3 vintages. And at 53 years old, I don’t need massive amounts more than I already have.
Just to clarify, I’m referring to his last few catalogs before he was let go. He didn’t appreciate certain wines.
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Is some of this geographic - ie people outside the NYC area making up a larger part of the audience? For example I am curious @Lars_Carlberg is a lot more Falkenstein going to other areas of the US than a few years ago? I see the allocations that my usual sources in nyc get and it certainly appears to be a lot less than a few year ago.
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Andrew - Is this data global or only for collectors in the U.S. Thank you for posting, its fascinating, Please post more German wine data!
Is he required to like everything to satisfy you?
He stood behind his selections.
Global. I don’t have an easy way to isolate US data w/o using our data scientist who is pretty busy right now. It is US-dominant though.
What data would you like to see? I was thinking of looking at the balance change in cellars between GG/trocken vs off-dry (Spatlese/Auslese) over time. That would take me a while since the interesting time frame includes producers joing the VdP and I’d have to manually add their older non-GG versions and some other non-automated data tricks.
The above was also raw-cellared at this current moment which is relevant to the original post. I considered using cellared+consumed but veered into a rabbit hole of wondering how to analyze when people were drinking some wines.
I did start poking around with Spatburgunder stats as well as the off-piste grapes like Sylvaner and will see if I can pull something together this weekend.
Let me know questions you have and I will see what I can do!
I would love to see the stats for Spätburgunder if possible. Even just top 10 or 20 holdings.
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Bernhard Huber 10.8% Bottles (11,084)
Weingut Keller 5.5% Bottles (5,680)
Rudolf Fürst 4.8% Bottles (4,920)
Friedrich Becker 3.3% Bottles (3,369)
Hessische Staatsweingüter Kloster Eberbach 3.1% Bottles (3,185)
Meyer-Näkel 2.9% Bottles (2,998)
Wasenhaus 2.8% Bottles (2,889)
Ziereisen 2.6% Bottles (2,691)
Weingut Franz Keller 2.6% Bottles (2,682)
Knipser 2.5% Bottles (2,522)
For some reason the biggest holding is:
2013 Hessische Staatsweingüter Kloster Eberbach Assmannshäuser Höllenberg Spätburgunder Blanc de Noirs Sekt brut “Crescentia” (Germany, Rheingau) 1.8%
Bottles (1,855)
For 2020 only:
Wasenhaus 8.8% Bottles (870)
Bernhard Huber 8.6% Bottles (852)
Rudolf Fürst 7.6% Bottles (747)
Weingut Franz Keller 6.1% Bottles (606)
Weingut Keller 5.5% Bottles (540)
Enderle & Moll 2.6% Bottles (260)
A. Christmann 2.5% Bottles (243)
Ziereisen 2.3% Bottles (225)
J.J. Adeneuer 2.2% Bottles (220)
Weingut Rings 2.2% Bottles (214)
Weingut Thörle 2.0% Bottles (201)
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Top 25 German Spätburgunder/Pinot Noir producers in current holdings on CT.
In parentheses, rank of in purchases since 2015 and 2019 (arbitrary cutoffs). I was curious to see if there were any real trends.*
Bernhard Huber (1,1) (2x #2, btw)
Rudolf Fürst (4,3)
Enderle & Moll (2,2)
Weingut Keller (5,7)
Friedrich Becker (3,4)
Ziereisen (6,5)
Meyer-Näkel (7,10)
Wasenhaus (9,6)
Weingut Franz Keller (8,8)
Jean Stodden (11,14)
Knipser (12,11)
Markus Molitor (13,13)
Weingut Salwey (10,10)
Weingut Thörle (15,9)
Kloster Eberbach
J.J. Adeneuer
Dr. Heger
Julia Bertram (14)
Weingut Rings
Holger Koch
Philipp Kuhn
Josef Walter
A. Christmann
August Kesseler
Weingut Ökonomierat Rebholz
Note - this is all red dry wines with variety = some name of Pinot Noir. A listing of wines only labelled as Spätburgunder gives a different ordering, most interesting E&M drop to #12.
- The difference in ranking between 2-5 are a few hundred bottles as are 6-8 as we dial into more recent purchases.
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Thank you. About what I would expect. Interesting how Wasenhaus jumps up with 2020 only.
There is a restaurant or retailer that has >1k bottles of that Sekt.
When we do year-end and less-off-the-cuff analysis, we exclude these commercial clients. It is just a pain and not something I am going to do for these casual bits.
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It’s not about me. I’m not the only one who noticed this and wondered why he didn’t like various wines, which were highly rated by both Mosel Fine Wines and Vinous. I can’t go into too much detail, but over time this upset his producer.
As you point out, these were his selections, and his name is on the back label.
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