Pavel Tchichikov
Pavel Tchichikov
well you gotta admit it's not lemberger
2015 Enderle & Moll
- Thread starter Rahsaan
- Start date
well you gotta admit it's not lemberger
Jim Hanlon
Jim Hanlon
I’m with you, I’ve had six bottles or so of Wasenhaus. All drinkable, but no fireworks yet. Drank some 2010 Dubreuil-Fontaine Pernand Ile de Vergelesses tonight that was better than any of them. And that’s an uncool red Burg you can buy for reasonable dollars without trying too hard.
Pavel Tchichikov
Pavel Tchichikov
At some point in this thread (it's very hard to align the scroll bar with the time dimension) I was going to get obnoxious and claim that the best german pinot I've had was actually cheap, but then I remembered how much I admire Klaus Peter's various bottlings that require a second mortgage. Also, a few years ago someone blinded me with an outstanding Peter Jakob Kühn pinot (2013, I think); and while he may produce some modestly priced versions, I was assured that this one was not.
Jayson Cohen
Jayson Cohen
I hope Marty jumps in here. I know he has educated views on the topic of German Pinots.
Pavel Tchichikov
Pavel Tchichikov
That is good know. Just how uncool was it?
robert ames
robert ames
and is it uncool because it doesn't cost enough to be cool?
Jim Hanlon
Jim Hanlon
That's mostly what I was getting at, not sharing my own judgment. Dubreuil-Fontaine isn't exactly a label chaser's wine. And there's a hell of a lot of label chasing in Burgundy.
Jim Hanlon
Jim Hanlon
I've not tasted very broadly, and have never had the bottles you mention, but the best Spatburgunders I've come across were from Henrik Mobitz in Baden. Unfortunately, he quit making wine a few vintages ago. Most or all of his small collection of vineyards went to Wasenhaus, which will sell the wines for at least twice the price Mobitz asked.
Yeah, losing Henrik was a blow, not least of which because he made one of the few remaining Gewurztraminers that I'd willingly, even gleefully, consume. But since he's trying to cure cancer in his day job, I guess I'll give him a pass for his decision.
Mark Lipton
Chemoapologist
Jayson flatters me. I wouldn't call myself "educated" on the topic---except to the extent one might say Barney from the Simpsons is "educated" on the subject of Duff's Beer. Anyway, I do drink and cellar a lot of Enderle & Moll and I am definitely a fanboy. The style (shorthand: high-toned bright/tart red fruit, etherial alpine/herbal aromas, transparency generally) speaks to me, and at $25 for the Basic Pinot and $55-60 for the Bundsandstein/Muschelkalk and similar bottlings, for me the value proposition is more compelling than most Burgundy in that range.
In terms of vintage variation, going back to 2012 or so (when I started taking notes), the 2015s were probably the biggest/ripest. I liked them a lot, but haven't checked on them in a couple of years.
I hear Comrade Pavel's point about the cheap German pinots sometimes being his favorites. Maybe sometimes that's a reflection of different barrel treatment? Some of these vines are quite young too, and the ones that are vinified with the intention of early drinking sometimes are more successfully realized than the ones that come in heavy schmantzy bottles. With Enderle & Moll for example, the Liaison often outshines the pricier bottlings on release.
Speaking of heavy schmantzy bottles, keep your eyes out for Ziereisen. That's the other great Baden Spatburgunder producer that has taken up a lot of real estate in my cellar over the past few years. The wines are bigger than E&M, and are more Dujac than D'Angerville if you get my drift, but again, I'm a fan.
I'm excited to try the Wasenhaus wines, although I haven't yet had the chance. One of these days I'll get around to picking up the couple of bottles that are waiting for me to pick up at Kingston Wine Co.
Pavel Tchichikov
Pavel Tchichikov
Also sprach Genosse L !
if you are referring to pre-2006 d'Angerville, the parallel is quite clear. If not, then I may require training on the subtleties.
i exercise caution not as someone who's been putting on lots of weight, but rather as a jaded sancerre rouge drinker. wtf is he talking about, you may ask. russian river notwithstanding, i started on pinot mainly in burgundy, and took several years to discover that i actually love the grape rather than its burgundian expression exclusively - mainly through pure black-fruity unf--ked with sancerre & menetou salon. and then many of these wines started disappearing, one by one, not through bad winemaking but through ambition that just wasn't appropriate. and that was before the cool kids showed up.
this by no means implies that baden pinot is necessarily better at the low end; i am keeping my eyes, ears, and mouth open, but sometimes it does feel like i've been here before.
Jim Hanlon
Jim Hanlon
The Ziereisen wines can be impressive, but have struck me as pretty polished. Perhaps that what's meant here by the Dujac reference, although my mind goes first to stem inclusion with Dujac. Frankly, the more recent D'Angerville wines are also polished and I'd consider them peers of Ziereisen in that regard. But the Ziereisen has had a bit more obvious fruit than most Burgundy.
Jim Hanlon
Jim Hanlon
I suppose if we have to choose....
robert ames
robert ames
speaking of zeiriesen, anybody here that likes to get down and funky with their gutedel (sp?), which is the name in their neck of the woods for chasselas?
it can be mighty frisky in a very fun way. it just might curl your nosehairs and make you glad to be alive.
it can be mighty frisky in a very fun way. it just might curl your nosehairs and make you glad to be alive.
Robert Dentice
Robert Dentice
I loved Mobitz and have had a fair number of them and still have a bunch in the cellar. I love Wasenhaus even more and have had at least 100 bottles from them, maybe more. One reason is that I love them and another is that they were all over Paris in a number of places that I like to eat but struggle with the all natural lists. The Gutedel and the new Grand Ordinaire are fine, simple wines but not ones to judge them overall on. The Pinots really shock every serious wine drinker I pour them for.
I just came back from two weeks in the Mosel and Pinot Noir is a big topic of interest there. I think we will be seeing many good Pinot from the Mosel.
I would be up for a NYC Spätburgunder dinner and would be able to supply a lot of the wines if we can settle on a date and place.
I just came back from two weeks in the Mosel and Pinot Noir is a big topic of interest there. I think we will be seeing many good Pinot from the Mosel.
I would be up for a NYC Spätburgunder dinner and would be able to supply a lot of the wines if we can settle on a date and place.
i haven't had the gutedel or the grand ordinaire. thus far the only real shock i've gotten from the pinots is the ambitious pricing on unproven wines. which is not to say i haven't enjoyed some of the ones i've drunk.
to broaden out to the rest of the comments above, the relationship between price and pinotiosity in teh fatherland seems to be entirely idiosyncratic to the producer. pace .pavel and jim h, i find the correlation on ziereisen wines to be negative -- the wines feel more made as one progresses up the food chain, and i like them less as this happens. at the other end of this scale is holger koch, where the one star (which is actually a specific site) and the reserve (ditto) both taste and feel (and in fact are to some extent -- see below) the wines that receive the least amount of intervention in the cellar. oddly enough, the three star (another specific site) is usually made in a way that is identical to the one star, yet vintage to vintage always tastes kind of manipulated and somehow more made to me. even though objectively it isn't. whereas the former two differ in that the reserve typically includes a good proportion of whole clusters / stems, and it is inevitably is the reserve that tastes like the least made wine in the cellar.
further, at the risk of shocking teh masses, i have learned to avoid enderle and moll. not because they are bad in any way, but because their's is an interpretation of spatburgunder that i just don't care for (see fatboy's quarterly hooch review and almanac for details).
fucking pinot, eh?
fb.
Robert Dentice
Robert Dentice
I completely agree. I have always felt that many German winemakers try to apply everything they know about winemaking to Pinot and it just does not work when you are dealing with young vines and marginal climates, in many cases.
Ulli Stein's Pinots are great examples of soulful Mosel based pinots that are not flashy.
Jim Hanlon
Jim Hanlon
You're not alone in E&M. I reached the same conclusion and sold all my bottles. I've run into a few other folks who feel the same. Even comrades drink wine and not ideologies.
Jayson Cohen
Jayson Cohen
I have no stake and no deep experience to offer. But I can offer 18 and 19 E&M Liaison to a dinner in the name of science - they were scientific singleton buys for me that I haven’t opened yet.