Deutsche Memories

Frankly, there's no burden of proof in this situation (but if there were, it is you who were challenging my statement, so then the burden of proof would be on you, not me). Each is entitled to his or her own opinion -- that's all it is, opinion and not fact. So we disagree. Big deal. That doesn't bother me and if it bothers you, that's your problem (and it would be worrisome).

FWIW, I certainly have not maintained that all wines from Juliusspital are superb. As I stated above, the supermarket wines are "preiswertig" (good value for their class), which is a relative judgment, not saying that they are great wines in an absolute sense.

As for the top vineyards, yes, I'll say that wines such as Stein and Julius-Echter-Berg often are splendid examples of the vineyards, in my opinion, although they are not the only ones from those vineyards that I adore and there is a difference from one producer to another -- just as there is among, say, Rousseau, Trapet, Rémy, Rossignol-Trapet, Leroy, and Dujac for Chambertin -- and I fully agree with what the French say about "la difference." I have my personal preferences for one or another, but I admire them all in their own individual ways.
 
Sorry to interrupt the vituperation, but, going back to John Ritchie, why is avoiding wood a sign of industrial or conventional wine? Is this special to German wines, in which case, could you explain why, or is this a general view of yours, in which case I can just write it up to eccentricity?
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
I'm sure he means the flavor of wood, and that avoidance is consistent with, if not a sign of, less interventionist approaches.
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It doesn't seem to be what he said, twice over. But he'll respond I'm sure. I'd be happy to have misunderstood.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
I'm sure he means the flavor of wood, and that avoidance is consistent with, if not a sign of, less interventionist approaches.
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Actually, he says the reverse. The spoofy guys go for the total inox.
 
Sharon is correct. Stainless steel seems to be the vessel of choice for spoofsters in Deutschland, unless we're talking Spatburgunder; then, like everywhere else, the spoofy ones love 100(+)% new oak. I don't think that stainless=spoof, though, and plenty of my favorite wines are made in metal tanks. I just happen to love what old wood can do with riesling, and think it's a good sign when the cellar has a healthy stock of well-maintained old barrels, regardless of size -- great riesling is even being made with old barrique (in combination with other vessels). I'd be surprised if someone can point out a spoofster with plenty of well-cared-for old fuder or stuck.
 
I'll grant that large wooden casks don't oak wines like new barrels, but neither does inox. And while inox may be reductive, I've never heard it described as spoofy or necessarily industrial.
 
Jonathan,
It may not be a sure sign of spoof, but industrial operations often employ Inox for the cost savings and ease of use relative to oak. The vast majority of low end industrial wines do use Inox and, if they want a whack of new oak, then oak chips are the method of choice.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
I'm sure he means the flavor of wood, and that avoidance is consistent with, if not a sign of, less interventionist approaches.
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Actually, he says the reverse. The spoofy guys go for the total inox.
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Indeed; serves me right for taking the misapprehension as stated.
 
I'm getting really lost here. There seems to be an underlying thread of logic that spoofy guys use stainless steel, therefore anyone who uses stainless steel is spoofy and anyone who uses oak isn't spoofy.

That raises some questions:

1. Where does this paradigm of logic come from? The Tea Party?

2. Can someone name the spoofy producers they're speaking about? Is reductive Riesling considered spoofy (and thus soon to be outlawed by the politburo)?
 
Claude,

That is exactly not what I am saying at all, in fact I'm saying the opposite.

Allow me to spell it out completely:

1. Most spoofy Riesling producers use only stainless steel.
2. Many non-spoofy producers use stainless steel.
3. Incidentally, few, if any, spoofy producers use old casks.

Stainless steel does not equal spoof. What do I need to do to further help clarify my position? This is hardly a Limbaugh-esque point of view.
 
I think part of the problem is a confusion of industrial swill with spoofy wine. Most of the spoofy wines I know are lovingly made that way and not made that way as the cheapest way to go. All those new oak barrels, not to mention celebrity oenologues cost money.

John's new explanation raises the question of why he brought up cask vs. inox at all since inox is not a symptom of spoof.I think Mark's response does clarify the discussion. John meant to--or should have meant to--take the use of inox as a possible presenting symptom of industrial swill, not spoof, but since he mixed the issue up with using artificial yeast (a common element of spoof), for instance, people, or at least I, got confused. Now you can all get back to pointless vituperation.
 
originally posted by John Ritchie:
Actually, I'll take the bait. Moselland.
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Well, taking a shot at one of the largest coops and one that has no great reputation doesn't really count, or else shows that Riesling is really in good shape if that's the worst one can come up with. There are plenty of producers making equally uninteresting wine that use oak.

Really, of the producers I know, and have visited, there are two whose fathers back in the 1980s and 1990s used reverse osmosis to put the estates on the map (with some observers -- I found the wines objectionable at the time). Those were spoofy, but these days everything is done normally and one is universally considered a great estate, the other produces ok wine, just not my style.

In the Pfalz, if you visit the cellars at Knipser, you might come away saying that it's spoofy as it's all very modern and on a very large scale, but if you taste the wines, they're really nothing like what Rolland does for Bordeaux, Caviola for Piedmont, etc., and I and all lot of others esteem Knipser's wines very highly. And there's a lot of oak at Knipser (there may be some stainless, too, but I don't recall it). Von Winning is another that some people (not me, although there are some wines that I find considerably better than others there) get in a snitch about, but that's oak, not stainless. Ditto Bürklin-Wolf. Z-H would be the closest to spoofy for me, but it really isn't spoofiness, just the style that I have trouble with, as the wines are well-made. The time I visited (which was a long time ago), it was an oak cellar and I have no reason to think that has changed. Those are the producers that I sometimes hear people referring to as spoofy, but they don't fall within your definition of spoofy.

Bottom line: with all due respect, I just don't understand where you're coming from, other than you have a set of rules that don't seem to pan out when applied to what I know of the wines and how they're made. Yes, mediocre and bad producers may come within the realm of your rules, but so do plenty of good and even great producers; and the producers that I most frequently hear accused of being spoofy (although I don't agree) don't fit in your set of rules.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
John --

I've got the answers in my visit notes, but I'm not going to take the time to dig them out and pore through them.
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With all the time you've spent arguing, couldn't you have just gone back and checked your notes? This all started with a pretty straightforward and seemingly well-intentioned question.
 
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