Hello everyone, freshly back from Germany following an approximately 2-week long trip through the wine regions of Franken, Wurttemburg, Baden, Pfalz, Rheingau, Rheinhessen, Mosel, and Ahr. Here are my impressions of the 2010 vintage.
My reaction was that the wines were surprisingly good. There were murmurs prior to going on this trip that the 2010 vintage was a difficult one, compared to the perfect 2009 vintage, given how cold the weather was in 2010. My taste buds braced for an assault. Instead, they were treated to a happy surprise.
So how come the wines were so shockingly good in a vintage some described as cold and difficult?
The truth was that the vintage was different. Completely different from the one before it, 2009, and different from many other vintages too. Wilhelm Haag from the estate Fritz Haag in the Mosel, who is now retired in his 70s and has passed his estate onto his son Oliver Haag, but is still involved in the family business for which he was a winemaker for 50 years (from the age of 20 to 70), said he has never in his 50 years making wine seen a vintage like this one: high must weights (meaning very good ripeness levels) AND high acidity. Typically, one sees acidity and must weights working in opposite directions - if you have high acidity in your grapes, it means there is inadequate ripeness, and conversely, if you have a great deal of ripeness, the acidity in the grapes is low. But this year was unique. Both acidity and ripeness (measured as must weight, or density, and in Germany, in units of Oeschle; in the U.S., measured in units of Brix) were high in this vintage. So what resulted were wines of a great intensity of flavor.
How did this come about? Well, we heard that good wine was not made at all estates in Germany, but it did seem to occur at all the estates we visited, in other words, top estates. Lesser estates did not always achieve this unique balance of high ripeness and acidity - if they picked too early, fearing the loss of crop to frosts and other naturally occurring problems, they ended up with grapes not quite ripe and full of tons of acidity. The estates in our portfolio tended to pick late. They tended to do a pre-harvest in early to mid-October, clipping off rotting grapes so they would not affect the healthy grapes, then doing a tedious, laborious harvest with two or three passes through the vineyard, picking only ripe, healthy grapes sometime in the end of October to the beginning of November. While they worried about their diminishing yields, they ultimately chose quality over quantity. This focus resulted in the pay-off - sensational wines with very good ripeness levels and very high levels of acidity as well.
Speaking of the low yields and high acidity - how did this come about this vintage? It started well before harvest... to the beginning, when flowering took place. Very likely due to the effect of the volcanic eruption in Iceland, which shut down flights all over Europe in the spring of 2010, the climactic pattern had changed and affected the normal flowering of grape vines. What resulted was a very poor flowering, followed by both a much decreased number of berries produced and small size of berries. This stage of the development of the grapes resulted in yields at the estates were visited to be decreased by 30% to 50%. Very signficant.
After flowering, the small number of small berries then enjoyed a cool summer in virtually all the regions. Development and ripening occured at a very slow pace. The fortunate factor in most regions was that in the fall, during the normal harvesting season, a high pressure weather front arrived and ripened the small clusters. As the berries were small, ripening seemed to take place rather quickly once some warm weather arrived. This saved the situation for the winemakers who waited long enough to let some of the acidity go down and some more physiologic ripening to take place.
So then, in summary, 2010 was a different vintage, but an excellent one for our estates. Yields were miniscule - decreased by 30% to 50% from 2009 (and 2009 wasn't even a high yield vintage, per se). Labor costs increased both in the vineyard and in the cellar (so costs went up while final product went down). Winemakers needed skill and experience to deal with this vintage, so wines at top estates were exceptional, but not everywhere. But when the wines were good, they were top notch, explosive with flavor. But there is not much of it!
Here are some scenes from our trip and some highlights. Above is the view from the Rudolf Furst Estate's new tasting room, a gorgeous modern structure with a breathtaking view of their vineyards and the town of Burgstadt below. Furst is in the Franken region and makes some of the prettiest Pinot Noirs I have tasted.
This is a romantic candle-lit cellar in Von Buhl in Deidesheim, in the Pfalz. We arrived here for a tasting at about 7pm one evening, and started, ritualistically, tasting sparkling wine in their cellar. Though we were tired, we cannot turn down great sparkling wine in a candle-lit cellar, can we?
Even though I have taken tons of pictures of the Monchhof Estate, I still cannot resist taking more. This time, the resident swans that are usually floating on the Mosel River were in front on the lawn having breakfast, so I snapped a pic of them doing so in front of the iconic winery.
We unfortunately had some sad news during the trip. We lost one of our winemakers to a tragic car accident just days after we tasted with him at his estate. Wolf Dietrich Salwey of Weingut Salwey in Oberrotweil in Baden was taken at age 69. Sad. We were happy to have spent some time with him and his terrific wines, which he made with his son Konrad Salwey.
Finally, here's a picture of Team California, enjoying a much needed beer from Eisgrub Brau in Mainz on the final evening of the tour. We made it! 27 estates in 11 days. 7 different hotels, about 23 hours of total flying time...... but it was all worthwhile because we got a first glimpse of a most interesting and delicious vintage.
The first time I tasted the wines of the Schloss Schonborn estate, it was on January 18 of this year - I had literally just gotten off the plane that Tuesday morning in Frankfurt, was driven to the Franz Kunstler estate in the Rheingau, where we walked the vineyard for a bit then had some delicious homemade chili for lunch, then had my first taste of the very exciting 2010 vintage Rieslings, along with Gunter Kunstler's vivid descriptions of how the volcanic eruptions of the spring of 2010 may have caused weather disruptions that disturbed the normal flowering of the grapevines. Right after that, we were whisked to the Schloss Schonborn Estate, a new Rheingau estate in our portfolio. My mind was muddled, but I remember whipping out my camera when our car pulled up as the winter sun was shining on the river and the grass between the naked vines were a vibrant light green, glistening from a recent rain. We were high up on a hillside and the vines went all the way down to the street below, where cars wizzed by, threatening to decimate anyone who might lose their step on the precariously steep vineyard. Established in 1349, this estate was making wine before glass bottles were popularized, before the Americas were discovered, before a lot of things, in other words. Their first wines were stored and served from wood barrels, until 1725 when they bottled their own wines. The estate has been owned by a line of counts, known as the the Grafs of Schonborn. The current Graf owns the estate here in the Rheingau, as well as an estate in the Franken region known as Schloss Hallburg. I would have no recollection on how I found the wines that day back in January when I had just gone 24 hours without sleep, having finished an entire novel on my new Kindle on my flight over to Germany, but fortunately, I took notes on the wines I tasted that day and put stars next to the wines I particularly found delicious. Fast forward three months to last week, when I had the opportunity to work with Schloss Schonborn's winery rep Marc Ramershoven, who flew in to the west coast to work with us in California before he was headed up to Vancouver, B.C. to pour at the International Wine Festival that takes place there every spring (I have never been). Marc brought with him 8 samples of wine from both the Rheingau and Franken estates of Schonborn, and I had a chance not only to revisit these wines again, but to show them to a select group of my customers. 
I have to say that of the wines he showed, the most impressive for me were his three dry Rieslings from the Rheingau. He showed a 2010 Schloss Schonborn Estate Riesling trocken, 2009 Schloss Schonborn Winkeler Hasensprung Riesling Spatlese trocken, and 2009 Schloss Schonborn Erbacher Marcobrunn Erstes Gewachs Riesling trocken. All three of them were so uniquely different. The 2010 Estate trocken was so crisp and refreshing and light and fresh on the palate. Great nose, perfect for that plate of oysters or just sipping by itself to get your appetite going. What a great little dry Riesling, terrific fruit, while staying dry, but not austere or excessively lean. Love this wine, will sell lots of it, I am certain. The second one, the 2009 Hasensprung Riesling Spatlese trocken - superb - infinitely different from the 2010 Estate dry - this Spatlese trocken is noble, rich, lengthy on the palate, with stone fruits, delicate mineral, a serious dry Riesling with terrific fruit yet again, but richer without being overly alcoholic. Finally, the 2009 Erstes Gewachs from the famous Marcobrunn vineyard - this is a terrific and delicious wine and shows the beauty of the first growth Rheingau wines. Peaches, limestone, powerful yet crystalline in its purity, mouthfilling, yet not overpoweringly so. This is a wine that can hold up to meat dishes or just drink it by itself and enjoy. Interestingly enough, I looked back in my notebook to that day back in January at the estate and it looks like among the 24 wines we tasted there, I put stars next to 09 Hasensprung Spatlese trocken and 09 Marcobrunn EG. I guess I liked them then and there and I like them here and now. The rest of the collection we showed were also terrific and top-notch - an interesting Pinot Gris "3 Star" from Franken which is a Pinot Gris harvested at Spatlese to Auslese level and fermented dry and put into a Burgundy bottle to likely communicate that this is a wine more like a white Burgundy in style than any Pinot Gris we tend to think of. This is not a crisp light white, more of a rich, full-bodied white, minus the oakiness one might find with Chardonnay. There were two Roses we showed, one from the Rheingau estate made exclusively of Pinot Noir, called 2010 Schloss Schonborn "PINK", and one from the Franken estate made from a blend of red local varieties, mostly hybrids of Dornfelder... there was also a Silvaner from Franken and a 2003 Schloss Schonborn Pfaffenberg Riesling Kabinett in a fruity style from a single vineyard, a monopole vineyard called Pfaffenberg, in the Rheingau. The 03 showed pretty well, not showing its 8 years at all, and maintaining a very decent acid profile, good balance overall. A wine that would be a terrific fruity Riesling by the glass. In all, I'm very happy we have this new to us estate Schloss Schonborn to work with. Everywhere we went during this work-with, wine folks seemed to have a very good impression of the estate, and loved the quality of the wines. I'm looking forward to having these wines in stock; they arrive to our warehouses in May.
