Jay Miller
Jay Miller
I've been informed that 13th St. is in the West Village and not Chelsea. My apologies.
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Nice new Chelsea wine store+bonus tasting notes
- Thread starter Jay Miller
- Start date
U
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originally posted by getting with the program:
What I meant is that that I had purchased and consumed. Mostly Spatlese, mostly Hermansholle and Brucke. Mostly between 5 and 10 years of age. Mostly 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2002. Almost all imported by Terry Theise except for some auction bottlings I purchased at Dee Vine in SF. Those are all centroid measures.
see? this is better. it allows one to see what the opinion is based on.
some fwiw thoughts in response:
96 donnhoff is weird. i dumped most of mine into the mouths of people who cared for it more than i. but recently the leistenberg kab (which has botrytis, ask connell) has begun to show all pretty like. i bought two or three cases iirc, and it finally gets drinkable when i'm down to a bottle or two. who fucking knew? last time i had it, the hh spaet was still odd.
i largely skipped 97 and 98 (the wines were too glossy for me), though the few 98s i did buy (hh auselese mainly -- i can't for the life of me remember why) is pretty showy at the moment, albeit in a primary way (i flew this out from europe, so who knows what other shit is like).
the 99s were lame and blocky for ages (i mainly bought hh and brucke spat in this vintage), but i like where they have been going for the past 12 months or so a lot.
i have no idea why anyone would be going near 01 and 02 at the moment. but, hey, it takes all sorts (again, i mostly passed on 01 cos the style ain't quite my thing, albeit that it is one that gives the n00bs and the points guys a boner).
or to put it another way, barring the 99s in the past year, none of the wines you are basing your opinion on are close to anything like "aged."
part of this is climate, and part of it is what you bought when: 99 aside, all of the wine you ended up with are from pretty fucking ripe years in the nahe -- the 89 and 90 donnhoffs were closed for a fuck of a long time, and frankly, i never cared for them as much as i do for more "difficult" vintages.
there's a reason why the great terroirs are at the limit of a given wine grapes' ripeness, and while it will be easier to make wine in the nahe when the climate is more like provence, i won't be wanting to drink the wines. (again fwiw, if you got "stuck" with the 02s, you were lucky -- when they get there, they will be the most interesting of the bunch you bought, to my taste).
in comparison, 92, 93, 94 and 95, 99 and 04 were more classic nahe vintages (and therefore much harder for the points guys to call). the 94s have proven to be stubborn (though brucke spaet is pretty now, and hh has been in the past, and will be again i think) -- but just considering brucke and hh spaet, 99 and 95* are currently good examples, and 92 and 93 great examples, of why one would think donnhoff can age. (the 91s were too, but it's been a while since i had em).
none of them are 30 years old. or even close.
so i dunno -- imagine a n00b buying barthod in 02, 03 and 05. now imagine what you would say when they come back in five years and start posting "barthod can't age for shit -- i haz sampled, and i haz teh knowledgez suckerz!" all over the wine interweb?
fb.
(* i only bought the hh spat 95, so can't comment on brucke).
Claude Kolm
Claude Kolm
And so Klaus-Peter Keller has planted vines in Norway.originally posted by fatboy:
there's a reason why the great terroirs are at the limit of a given wine grapes' ripeness,
fb.
At Roulot a few weeks ago, I ran into a guy who makes Chardonnay in Belgium, near Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle, whose wines are in three star restos (that's restos as in bojos, and Saint-Jos).
U
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Well, I already posted on '98 Kirschheck tasted on Thanksgiving, and following this discussion there is no way I am wasting a bottle of Brucke.
I think to object to ripeness and leave it at that is to insult these wines.
I try to visualize wines, in how fruit and minerality work together. Granite does not mitigate ripeness in the way that slate does. As you drink the wine, if you do choose to visualize the process, the fruit flows around the granite but does not penetrate it; the minerality is much less granular and so are the building blocks of the wine as a whole. Slate hosts the fruit in the Mosel, and there is rarely(*) a doubt about the wines' mineral frame, no matter how inaccessible the fruit may be at a given stage. Here, granite does not host shit, the fruit contains it, like pits in pulp. If this is not your cup of tea, I don't have a problem with it.
That is, until the wine is sufficiently mature, e.g. 1990 Auktion or 1993 Hermannshohle Spatlese. There, the coarser minerality is absorbed into the fruit, and the fruit gets a lift to regain the freshness of its youth, but with much greater complexity.
Why do all great wines have to always show linear progression towards the magic place? Some of our favourite wines do not. Are you going to dismiss a Huet Sec because it smells corked between years 3 and 12 of its life? Lets be consistent. And I brought up Cru Beaujolais earlier for the same reason - I mostly like them young and old, and very little in between. And that's because flavours progress quickly, but the minerality does not yield. 2005s are already showing some of this, and it's not a good time for them. And what's the soil makeup in Fleurie again? Geez.
(*) not sure about Thanisch
I think to object to ripeness and leave it at that is to insult these wines.
I try to visualize wines, in how fruit and minerality work together. Granite does not mitigate ripeness in the way that slate does. As you drink the wine, if you do choose to visualize the process, the fruit flows around the granite but does not penetrate it; the minerality is much less granular and so are the building blocks of the wine as a whole. Slate hosts the fruit in the Mosel, and there is rarely(*) a doubt about the wines' mineral frame, no matter how inaccessible the fruit may be at a given stage. Here, granite does not host shit, the fruit contains it, like pits in pulp. If this is not your cup of tea, I don't have a problem with it.
That is, until the wine is sufficiently mature, e.g. 1990 Auktion or 1993 Hermannshohle Spatlese. There, the coarser minerality is absorbed into the fruit, and the fruit gets a lift to regain the freshness of its youth, but with much greater complexity.
Why do all great wines have to always show linear progression towards the magic place? Some of our favourite wines do not. Are you going to dismiss a Huet Sec because it smells corked between years 3 and 12 of its life? Lets be consistent. And I brought up Cru Beaujolais earlier for the same reason - I mostly like them young and old, and very little in between. And that's because flavours progress quickly, but the minerality does not yield. 2005s are already showing some of this, and it's not a good time for them. And what's the soil makeup in Fleurie again? Geez.
(*) not sure about Thanisch
originally posted by .sasha:
Well, I already posted on '98 Kirschheck tasted on Thanksgiving, and following this discussion there is no way I am wasting a bottle of Brucke.
I think to object to ripeness and leave it at that is to insult these wines.
I try to visualize wines, in how fruit and minerality work together. Granite does not mitigate ripeness in the way that slate does. As you drink the wine, if you do choose to visualize the process, the fruit flows around the granite but does not penetrate it; the minerality is much less granular and so are the building blocks of the wine as a whole. Slate hosts the fruit in the Mosel, and there is rarely(*) a doubt about the wines' mineral frame, no matter how inaccessible the fruit may be at a given stage. Here, granite does not host shit, the fruit contains it, like pits in pulp. If this is not your cup of tea, I don't have a problem with it.
That is, until the wine is sufficiently mature, e.g. 1990 Auktion or 1993 Hermannshohle Spatlese. There, the coarser minerality is absorbed into the fruit, and the fruit gets a lift to regain the freshness of its youth, but with much greater complexity.
They are not my cup of tea and I'm not sure aging will change that, in general. I imagine I might take to specific wines and vintages. All other things being equal, they are finishing with higher alcohol and seemingly lower acidity than comparable wines elsewhere. Hence the ripeness comment. I'm not the first to mention it.
I can't cellar everything, so I have to choose. If you want to influence me with a bottle, I think you know I'm open minded.
U
Unknown
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I admit I've never experienced the sensation of higher alcohol finish here, the way I have in the Pfalz.
As to lower acidity, that's a tricky one. I've heard the 82 vs 86 or 61 vs 59 bordeaux argument too many times on that account, and what I find is that if lower acidity wines are supported by corresponding citrus flavours (be it pomegranate for 82 brdx or quince for brucke) the wine remains "true", i.e. complete. It's a fine balance of sorts, and it can exist at lower acidities.
As to lower acidity, that's a tricky one. I've heard the 82 vs 86 or 61 vs 59 bordeaux argument too many times on that account, and what I find is that if lower acidity wines are supported by corresponding citrus flavours (be it pomegranate for 82 brdx or quince for brucke) the wine remains "true", i.e. complete. It's a fine balance of sorts, and it can exist at lower acidities.