2007 Germany - Rudipalooza Style!

Just got back from L.A.'s Rudipalooza - that's Rudi Wiest's tasting. This is the start of their vintage tour. They just got in from Germany yesterday, tomorrow they go up to San Francisco, then Friday down to San Diego then whirlwind across the country after that.

A lot of great producers down here this year, and I managed, after tasting 100 wines, to take pics with a few of them. Here is Dorothee Zilliken from Forstmeister Geltz-Zilliken from the Saar region:

Dorothee is super sweet and also a very intelligent woman and I love her whole attitude. She is lovely to be around. I met her about a month ago when she did a tasting for us in the store. Wonderful person.

Here is the hottie: Mr. Tim Frohlich of Schafer-Frohlich. Sorry to be disrespectful by referring to his appearance, but I am still in the ether as I just left the tasting a couple of hours ago. Tim Frohlich makes some sensational lazer-beam awesome wines from the Nahe, and he rivals Donnhoff in the Nahe region. Here he is, Mr. Top Gun:

Here is the winemaker Michael, I forgot his last name, from Wegeler Rheingau:

Great tasting. Shown in this pic in the foreground is Felix Buerklin from Kunstler. The wines there showed excellent. I enjoyed in particular the 2007 Spatburgunder which I think I want to possess now. The one next to his is Johannes, the new rep from Robert Weil now that Karina Stuhler is staying home more with her new son. Next to him is Dorothee Zilliken, then next to him is Mr. Tyrell, who is the brother of the owner of the estate Karthauserhof. I can't see who is next after him but other stars that were present were Bert Selbach from Dr. F. Weins-Prum and of course Robert Eymael from Monchhof.

All in all, a great tasting of the highly lauded 2007 wines, which were all delicious and perfect in structure, although, for me, I also liked the 2006 and 2005 wines, so 2007 while fantastic, is not the end all and be all. I love the 2007s and will probably buy a ton nevertheless. right now the 2007s are being compared to the 1971s in that their clean fruit is tops - that is fantastic since ageability of these wines is so important.

Oh, I also got to taste a 1997 Gunderloch Nackenheimer rothenberg riesling Auslese that was really a pleasure. Always great to taste an older riesling!