2002 Dönnhoff Spȁtlese

originally posted by .sasha:

But as much as I like late 90s Donnhoff, the difference in style vis-a-vis the '94 is kind of shocking.
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Any thoughts on whether it's worth breaking into a '97 or '99 Brucke Spatlese soon?
 
As Keith said Donnhoff's aging ability has been debated for a long time. I have a less than 50-50 hit rate with 90s era wines. The corks are small and many have broken. Also several people who would know have said that the wines that went through the DC area were cooked. The debate rages on.
 
originally posted by Robert Dentice:

As Keith said Donnhoff's aging ability has been debated for a long time. I have a less than 50-50 hit rate with 90s era wines. The corks are small and many have broken. Also several people who would know have said that the wines that went through the DC area were cooked. The debate rages on.
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Robert, which of the four spataesen from 1998 I had brought to rieslingfeier last year did you taste? I don't recall, sorry!

I do recall you tasted my corked Carl Loewen Auslese for sure :-)
 
originally posted by John Ritchie:
originally posted by .sasha:


Have fun with recent von Schubert, guys.
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Dr. Carl did pretty well in 2010, I thought.
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The pinot blanc and the spatburgunder are my favourite, John!
The former have the benefit of the best location and soil around, where the oldest R vines in Abtsberg used to be! Really exciting stuff.
 
originally posted by Robert Dentice:

As Keith said Donnhoff's aging ability has been debated for a long time. I have a less than 50-50 hit rate with 90s era wines. The corks are small and many have broken. Also several people who would know have said that the wines that went through the DC area were cooked. The debate rages on.
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in the period 2002-10, i drank from many dozens of cases of 90-97 Donnhoff that i personally had airfreighted into cali from their repository in teh frozen north. i would have said, "personally drank many dozens of cases ," but the fact is, a great many of bottles ended up being shared with and donated to inmates of this, and the earlier disorderly bored in order to provide some uncontaminated data for folks with this particular bee in their bonnet to chew over.

while the 94s especially went through something of a lumpen, closed down phase age 4 - 10 or so (partly, i think, because the wines made by Donnhoff in those days had a lot more phenolic character than they do today), the wines from 90-95 i shipped myself aged beautifully (as did 88s and 89s, in their time), and the style of teh dotster's 94 ob spaet was very much in keeping with these prior experiences.

it is true that the corks in some of these wines came from the shittier side of lame (in 93 especially), but i never actually had a wine show badly on account of its cork allowing a smidgen of seepage (.sasha will recall bottles of 93 hh kab and spaet that were electric at age 10 or so, despite having corks that were weeping like a particularly emotional mother of the bride).

the 96s were weird, and only began to make a little bit of sense to me long after i was well into a campaign of surreptitiously abandoning their number on tables / in planters at geek gatherings, etc.

starting in 97, the style of the wines seemed to change (whether because the climate did, or because Donnhoff did, i don't know), and i began to buy far less of them, so i'll leave those maters for others, but regarding unmolested bottles from 88-95, there simply is no debate as to the matter of how the wines aged. the many lurkers who downed all that hooch can attest to this.

fb.
 
originally posted by .sasha:

The pinot blanc and the spatburgunder are my favourite, John!
The former have the benefit of the best location and soil around, where the oldest R vines in Abtsberg used to be! Really exciting stuff.
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Wow, it certainly seems that things do not stand still at Grunhaus.

Speaking of which, does anyone know what the riesling 'fusion' bottling is that I now see on their website? A quick scan of the website doesn't list an explanation.
 
The Superior has been around for a while (since the middle 2000s if I remember correctly) and was from old vines (they also make a Herrenberg Superior). I tried a bunch of the earlier efforts and was never really convinced, but others may have more systematic exposure. It was also a weird style. Dryer than the off-dry wines but not as dry as the GG wines, a weird in-between nether world in my experiences.
 
originally posted by Jay Miller:
I'm also wondering about their Abstberg Riesling Superior?
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Jay, I think Gilman has a detailed account of these.

While on the subject, I would like to add that if I were forced to drink only one German producer 1997 or older, while making such a choice would cause hypothetical pain, I'd have to go with Gruenhauser. I strongly suspect The Fish would concur.
 
originally posted by fatboy:
it is true that the corks in some of these wines came from the shittier side of lame (in 93 especially), but i never actually had a wine show badly on account of its cork allowing a smidgen of seepage (.sasha will recall bottles of 93 hh kab and spaet that were electric at age 10 or so, despite having corks that were weeping like a particularly emotional mother of the bride).
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These 93s were borderline life changing in a sense that they recalibrate your interpretation of all German wine you drink from that point on. Modern wines could be made in a different style, by design or not, but there are qualities you can look for, or have a preference for, that you may have overlooked before establishing such important benchmarks.

the 96s were weird, and only began to make a little bit of sense to me long after i was well into a campaign of surreptitiously abandoning their number on tables / in planters at geek gatherings, etc.
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It appears his 96s are a one off, and should be treated as a discontinuity.

starting in 97, the style of the wines seemed to change (whether because the climate did, or because Donnhoff did, i don't know), and i began to buy far less of them, so i'll leave those maters for others, but regarding unmolested bottles from 88-95, there simply is no debate as to the matter of how the wines aged. the many lurkers who downed all that hooch can attest to this.
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How convenient that I picked up exactly where fb left off. I bought significant quantities starting with 1997, and continued to buy through the middle of the following decade. No issues with small or leaky corks, except for a single bottle of 1998 Leistenberg Kab; that's one bottle out of cases and cases of the stuff. (And the bottle still turned out delicious). As far as corked wines, while several MSR producers I've collected were badly hit in 1998 and 1999, the only vintage that gave me any trouble at all with Donnhoff so far is 1997, annoyingly most often with HH Sptl.
As far as ageing the juice:
Do not confuse these with pre-1997 wines. They are ageing just fine but the flavour target is different.
Do not confuse them with MSR, in case you are a n00b.
If I didn't know better, I'd say the naysayers have never collected and tasted red burgundy over a long stretch. Why is it OK for red burgs to go through (occasionally multiple) heavily reduced, undrinkable, unrecognizable stages, and not OK for Donnhoff Spat to entertain a midlife crisis in a somewhat dull, structurally loosely defined state? I am yet to see a single wine from 97-00 fail to snap out of this, normal variation notwithstanding.
If you don't understand this, or just don't like the wines, then just drink MSR.

Last but not least, the same wines in DC are fucked up. Not just occasional bottles - I know people down there who purchased as many or more of the same wines as I did, and every time there was a virtual tasting where an off 99 HH was opened in DC and I would run down and pull one of the same, mine would be singing.
 
originally posted by .sasha:

Why is it OK for red burgs to go through (occasionally multiple) heavily reduced, undrinkable, unrecognizable stages, and not OK for Donnhoff Spat to entertain a midlife crisis in a somewhat dull, structurally loosely defined state? I am yet to see a single wine from 97-00 fail to snap out of this, normal variation notwithstanding.
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This was Terry Theise's point about Donnhoff GG and aging, the last time I heard him address the issue.
 
originally posted by .sasha:
originally posted by Robert Dentice:

As Keith said Donnhoff's aging ability has been debated for a long time. I have a less than 50-50 hit rate with 90s era wines. The corks are small and many have broken. Also several people who would know have said that the wines that went through the DC area were cooked. The debate rages on.
Click to expand...

Robert, which of the four spataesen from 1998 I had brought to rieslingfeier last year did you taste? I don't recall, sorry!

I do recall you tasted my corked Carl Loewen Auslese for sure :-)
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Sorry I don't recall either. I have had many good 98s.
 
originally posted by .sasha:
As far as ageing the juice:
Do not confuse these with pre-1997 wines. They are ageing just fine but the flavour target is different.
Do not confuse them with MSR, in case you are a n00b.
If I didn't know better, I'd say the naysayers have never collected and tasted red burgundy over a long stretch. Why is it OK for red burgs to go through (occasionally multiple) heavily reduced, undrinkable, unrecognizable stages, and not OK for Donnhoff Spat to entertain a midlife crisis in a somewhat dull, structurally loosely defined state? I am yet to see a single wine from 97-00 fail to snap out of this, normal variation notwithstanding.
If you don't understand this, or just don't like the wines, then just drink MSR.
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The closed state for red Burgundy is when the wines are showing all structure. That's the exact opposite of showing *no* structure, which is the condition these wines are in when some of us find them past their best. Some of them may rebound and make us eat our words but there is certainly no basis to *assume* that they will just because (some) red Burgundy does. They're totally different animals with different variables factoring in their ageability. (One of those variables is sugar. Not sure I'd be comfortable extrapolating from 1990s vintages how the much sweeter wines from the 2000s will behave.)
 
I know this isn't therapy, but I've been on a journey of personal discovery and have thus discovered that I mostly don't love the kinds of flavors one gets from older riesling. It almost doesn't matter where it is from. I'll drink the notable exceptions from others cellars.

Now that I know that about myself, I can buy what I want with a clear mind and open heart. I've learned to love myself and my riesling.
 
originally posted by VLM:
I know this isn't therapy, but I've been on a journey of personal discovery and have thus discovered that I mostly don't love the kinds of flavors one gets from older riesling. It almost doesn't matter where it is from. I'll drink the notable exceptions from others cellars.

Now that I know that about myself, I can buy what I want with a clear mind and open heart. I've learned to love myself and my riesling.
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You and my beloved cohort in crime would get along just fine, then. She views the aging of white wine as largely a waste and only likes Riesling when it is fresh, zingingly acidic and close to dry. I recently opened a '10 Chidaine Choisilles that she rejected as "oxidized." Since she's a more acute taster than I, I can't really call her on that pronouncement, though the wine tasted fine to me (digression: she's more sensitive to thiols, oxidation and Brett than I; I'm more sensitive to sulfites, yeast autolysis, mintiness and oak than she is).

Now I'm left with the quandary of who to drink my '02 CFE (assuming that it's not pox'd) and '08 Chablis with...

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by VLM:
I know this isn't therapy, but I've been on a journey of personal discovery and have thus discovered that I mostly don't love the kinds of flavors one gets from older riesling. It almost doesn't matter where it is from. I'll drink the notable exceptions from others cellars.

Now that I know that about myself, I can buy what I want with a clear mind and open heart. I've learned to love myself and my riesling.
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if youse talking diesel, youse talk my langwidge. if i wanted barf in my hooch, i'd load up prior to decanting.

that said, i also feel bad about the phrase "older riesling." on average, after all, i also despise older pinot.

the dotster's 94 ob spaet -- the source of all this navel gazing -- had next to zero older riesling character. it was pithy, still orange/apricot primary, with a pleasingly harmonious phenolic / lengthy finish. structurally, it presented like a dry wine, and was more akin to a montlouis than some mosel bullshit.

i fear these wines don't really exist any more, but please don't let encounters with their abused and retarded siblings convince you they are mythical.

fb.
 
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