I haven’t been back to Germany since 2003, but I wonder if the new producers have less prestigious plots in the famous vineyards, and so stand a better chance of harvesting real Kabinett. That and an apparent devotion to the classic style rather than the 2005-2018 monster Kabinetts.
Julian Haart and Max Kilburg have “prestigious plots” in Piesport and Wintrich.
Then clearly their methods are different than those making richer kabinetts.
Although there are many different factors in making Kabinett wines, I think that some of the more established producers have simply picked too late in certain vintages.
I get the feeling that Kabinett is ice-skating uphill in the marketplace and producers are trying different styles to adapt and/or that marketplace slack has given them the space to experiment. Eitherway, I am glad to find what I like and hope others can then as well.
Choosing when to pick is certainly part of an overall method.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that a parcel higher up the hill in Piesport, such as in Falkenberg, might not be better for Kabinett. But Julian Haart or A.J. Adam has proven that it’s still possible to produce light Kabinett wines in prime parcels in Goldtröpfchen. The same goes for Keller in Schubertslay, not to mention in Hipping and Pettenthal. These are relatively warm sites, and I’m not even sure if Keller produced a Kabinett from Schubertslay in 2023.
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I’m glad it’s working for them, but cynical me wonders if something else is going on, just like I can’t believe that Red Bull/Verstappen are legitimately that much better than everyone else in F1.
Yes, I am incredibly cynical.
As I mentioned above, Mosel Fine Wines highlights five producers of Kabinett for the 2022 vintage, all but two are esteemed estates. Take, for example, Egon Müller, who decided to harvest early for Kabinett in both the 2022 and 2023 vintages. In turn, his team is said to have produced very light Kabinett wines.
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I heard that Goldtropfchen whilst hot, has good ‘water retention’ that has been a positive in recent dry years.
When I ‘helped’ harvest Schubertslay for Kabinett grapes we were the one crew in the whole visible vineyards harvesting on 21 September 2019.
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That’s a good point. Scharzhofberg has good water reserves, too. Egon Müller also harvested grapes for Kabinett in Wiltinger braune Kupp, which is considered a warm site on the Saar.
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It’s also a big trend amongst with younger growers / wine makers to make the kabinetts as light as possible with good acidity so the contrast with more-is-better -generation can be surprisingly big even if the vineyards are the same. I tend to think that most wine makers in Mosel did not even wanted to do proper kabinett in good years when sugars where high enough because it was easier to sell bigger wines even if they were labelled as kabinetts. But now the game is completely opposite and while the spätlese-level kabinetts are still to be found the amount is noticable smaller every year when I taste the kabinett lineups of new generation. And even the spätleses are become slimmer. One thing to notice is also that the best kabinetts are usually picked from a very small area of the vineyard and it’s more or less same area every year that has ability to offer perfect conditions for making kabinett (sun exposure, winds, water reserves, etc), Goldtröpfchen is a prime example of this. You can’t make good kabinett from the whole vineyard but just some small plots.
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I have heard similar things about Domprobst.
There is something quite beautiful about Piesport Kabinetts - when they are on. Hard to articulate but definetely different fruits and compositions than any other vineyard along the Mosel. I find it is a sort of filtering, a harnessing of the yellow/orange/warm spectrums of fruits and the acids that they carry, into very fine, linear layers that lay and streak across midpalate. Warmth with restraint, coiled energy and acids neither showy nor lacking.
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Welcome @collinwagner !
The amount of German wine knowledge here just increased exponentially!
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I’d love to see what Martin Müllen could do farming some of the top plots in the Mosel. I do love his '21 Kabinetts.
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Hühnerberg is a top plot. It was ranked very high but was forgotten for a long time until Martin Müllen started to clear / replant that up. I’m also more than happy that Müllen has main parcels around Kröv instead of more famous / prime vineyards as I think Paradies / Letterlay are still highly overlooked. I’m not sure if one can even produce 10% dry kabinetts from “prime” parcels anymore.
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The key is lightness without greenness and thinness. To quote Mosel Fine Wines, “some wines have become a little rounder and sometimes a little watery.” The latter indicates high yields.
There are also producers, such as Nik Weis and Peter Lauer, who make a pass through one or more parcels in a vineyard to pick Kabinett grapes and leave other grapes to hang longer for Spätlese, Auslese, or GG.
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In Graach, Himmelreich also has good water retention.
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I suppose that’s not terribly surprising given other nearby sites.