Maker's Table

Lemberger

Grafen Neipperg
Lemberger "Württemberg"
2005
13% ABV | Price: about $15

Germans call this grape lemberger, but in Austria, where it's more widely planted, they call it blaufränkisch. It's not unlike gamay in its body and flavor profile, and until DNA evidence proved otherwise, gamay was thought to be its forebear. It's a light-bodied red with moderate acidity, and this one has just a hint of residual sweetness, which makes it enormously food-friendly.

The color is limpid garnet with a faint brickish cast at its rim. Aromas of dusty raspberry and blackberry mingle with faint green tea and an herbaceousness pleasantly evocative of late September afternoons. The aromas have a bewitching suppleness—not sharp nor fruity, not oaky nor caramelized—just beautiful blackberry bramble fruit an an earthiness that says this wine was grown, not made. It smells like Indian Summer.

It is light-bodied on the palate, and here offers blackberries in full fruit, a juicy mouthful cut by that bitter snap blackberries use to tell you their true purpose, that they're really a conveyance for seeds, and that you are simply their minion. This wine has some tannin, and so there is black tea, now, not green tea, with good acidity. The finish is lithe and graceful.

This is an absolutely stunning pairing for the chicken I roasted tonight on a bed of red onions and blood oranges. The flavors commingle beautifully with the bitterness of the roasted citrus rind, the sweetness of the fruit and caramelized onions, and the savory chicken pan juices.

This is old world, not new, and a stunning bargain. Drink it now.

 

Scheurebe

Müller-Catoir
Haardt Scheurebe
2009
12.0% ABV | Price: about $29

Very pale clear gold, this Scheurebe at first offers a whiff of petrol and fresh pear. Once it warms it starts yielding tropical fruits—pineapple, passion fruit, a little oily citrus, and a hint of spring flowers, too, unless that's just what's in the air. On the palate the wine has great acidity and a salty, slatey backbone against which luscious guava and Asian pear and tropical fruit stand forward. There is layer upon layer of flavor, each yielding to the next in a delicate and felicitious interplay. The finish lingers long.

I visited Müller-Catoir on a recent trip to the Mosel, Pfalz, and Rheingau regions of Germany. During my group's scheduled tasting, I (somewhat ill-advisedly) engaged the winemaker in a debate about whether a keller could be considered part of a wine's terroir. The molds, yeasts, and flora of a cellar might influence the wine en route, I suggested, images of black cellar mold fresh in mind from our recent cellar tours. They help the wine be what it will become. (I was embolded a little when one of my colleagues, a winemaker, agreed with me.)

No, he said, terroir is the vineyard, tout court. Its influence ceases the moment the grape is harvested. After that, it's up to the winemaker to do as little as possible to the wine, to coax it forth and stay out of the way.

If he's right, then the slate soils of the Pfalz evidently do know what to do.

Riesling Lessons

Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt
Piesporter Goldtröpfchen Riesling Kabinett
2005
9% ABV | Price: about $19

I'm trying to learn about Riesling, so I'm buying all I can find (and afford). My local merchant thrust this into my hands the other day. "It's delicious," he said, shaking his head lightly, the way one does when one recalls a memory with both disbelief and pleasure. 

I poured myself a glass as I began to strip fresh peas from their shells, shave young fennel into thin strips, and prep fresh herbs from the garden. The wine is deep gold, with a savory, floral aroma weighted by something a little oily, a little herbaceous. I had picked a lot of sage tonight, and as I washed it gently, its fragrance bloomed in my hands, marrying suddenly with the wine, the two blending high notes and low notes, dissolving into the middle distance, together.

It's a Qualitätswein mit Prädikat, off-dry, with blushing stone fruit and good acidity. I like learning about Riesling.

 

Summer of Riesling

Prinz du Salm-Dalberg'sches Weingut
Schloss Wallhausen Riesling
2000
10% ABV | Price of current vintage: about $18–20

We don't know where we got this bottle, and we don't know when. We don't know how much we paid, and we couldn't find the price for this vintage or the current release. We only know that at some point we put a sticker on this bottle to "Open in 2010," and that it seemed like it might be just right for a hot night in New Hampshire.

These grapes were grown in the Nahe region on the oldest continuously owned family wine estate in Germany, dating to 1200 (terroir, baby). The land is now organically farmed—and likely was back then, too. Wines labeled "Schloss Wallhausen" are not from designated vineyards, so are not this producer's top quality, and this one is a simple Qualitätswein.

Still, it's a delight. Gold in the glass, it has a full, white-flowered nose with a bit of lime and faint petrol. On the palate there's apricot and light citrus, with good acidity and a mineral aspect that together balance its moderate sugar. It finishes very long, the stone fruit trailing into the stony distance.

It's hard to say what age has wrought upon this wine, beyond buyer's remorse: I wish we'd laid down more.

 

Turley and Friends

 

Friends of ours, a couple who live nearby, belong to Turley's wine club. This is a rare privilege; Turley has a waiting list to get onto the mailing list to secure an option to buy their Zins. But our friends are in, and have been for a while, receiving two cases a year. The trouble is, they can't drink it all, and their new order ships soon. Desperate times call for desperate measures: it was time for a Turley dinner.

There were twelve of us. We started the evening with a single bottle of Scholium—a curiosity the hostess wanted to try—then progressed to Rieslings and a few games of billiards. I had never played billiards, and wasn't sure I could even hit the cue ball itself, let alone smack it into another ball, sending that one, striped or solid, into corner pocket, side pocket, whatever. Fortunately somebody decided I should be the one to shepherd the wines, so I busied myself with capsules and corkscrews, filling the players' glasses and topping them off when they ran dry.

There were four Reislings, all 2007s ranging from $12 to about $26: P. J. Valckenberg Estate Dry Riesling, Johannishof Johannisberg Reingau Kabinett, Maximin Grünhäuser Herrenberg Kabinett, and Grans-Fassians Trittenheimer Apotheke Spätlese. (Yes, these wines are a mouthful in more than one sense.)

The Valckenberg was quite dry and slightly frizzante, while the others were off-dry. The Johannishof and Grünhäuser were both a bit cloying, in truth, but the Grans-Fassians offered a very clear, floral nose and nice acid. This was my favorite of the four, but all of them paired nicely with the pork springrolls and hoisin sauce our hosts passed as appetizers.

I did, eventually, cue up, when the last game on the table needed a fourth. As anticipated, I was terrible. But Riesling and billiards is a winning combination. There's enough alcohol in the wine to lower your inhibitions—who cares if you just sunk your cue ball?—but not enough to ruin your aim, whatever there was to begin with. 

It was time for dinner. We started with a roasted pepper soup spiced with chipotle and dressed with fresh crab and a little crème fraîche. Our hosts poured the first Turleys, from Ueberroth and Frederick's Vineyards. Both wines were savory and smoky, with a funky, earthy chewiness. The Ueberroth leaned a little more toward fruit, while the Frederick's leaned toward earth—steelier and a little bit sulfurous. But the heat and heft of both were an easy match for the pepper and chipotle—a difficult pairing for nearly any wine.

And then came the main course. Our host had been up late the night before braising beef shortribs in Cabernet, flaming-off five bottles of the stuff to make a sauce so dark and concentrated it was almost chocolatey. The meat was tender and succulent, the dish a perfect foil for Turley's concentrated style. Soon we were opening two more bottles—from Rattlesnake Ridge and Moore "Earthquake" Vineyards—wines that were, unbelievably, even more powerful than the first, hugely extracted and eye-crossingly alcoholic. The Earthquake drank like earth itself, very savory, slightly vegetal, dark like soil and strong like a mountain.

We finished with carrot cake, delighted by a sweet ending and a dessert that could sop the wine in our stomachs. Our hosts had been enormously generous, lavishing us with beautiful wine and food and acting as if it was we who were were doing them a favor, helping them work through their Turley share. We went home sated and happy, and glad to live only four miles away.

 

Turley Wine Cellars

Paso Robles Ueberroth Vineyard Zinfandel 2007
Sonoma Valley Frederick's Vineyard Zinfandel 2007
Howell Mountain Rattlesnake Ridge Zinfandel 2007
Napa Valley Moore "Earthquake" Vineyard Zinfandel 2007

Current prices: $60–$80