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THE 2004 GERMAN VINTAGE
Play a little game with me. Pretend it’s early September and the summer’s back is finally broken, the first Canadian cold front has swept in with its keening blue skies and cleansing breezes. The air is blissful and cool under a still-warm sun. You’re at your local farmer’s market, maybe buying the last of the year’s tomatoes and basil—they’re still there—but you notice the baskets are groaning with the first apples. Someone’s offering samples, and you take one.
You bite into the first apple of the autumn and it is so lovely you nearly weep: juicy, sweet, crisp, almost minerally, and it snaps and crunches in your mouth even as it pours that fresh sweet juice all through your senses.
Imagine all that. And now you know what the 2004 vintage is like in Germany.
The first reports were tentative. After a cool summer there was a seam of good weather in September followed by a changeable October. Picking started very late, but the weather held. The vintage favors those who picked late and selected.
The next reports spoke of acidity, and likened the crop to 1996 or ‘94. But a few weeks later came the first indications of something special. Hans Selbach tasted an Auslese from the Sonnenuhr and said it brought the great ‘75 to mind. Growers reported unusually strong tartrate precipitation. Acidity was looking less and less predominant with each passing day.
I am struck with the homogenous quality of the 2004s. I can scarcely recall a vintage so steadily excellent. Of course I taste only growers in the highest echelon of quality, but I do that every year. Consider: in 2003 there were legitimately great wines and a number of bland dull wines. In 2002 a lot of wines showed marked tartness and unpleasant phenolics. Even the Great One 2001 needed care in selecting, as certain wines showed unwholesome botrytis. Yet in nearly 4 weeks of tasting 2004s I cannot identify any common flaws.
At the very beginning I noted certain green flavors, as if every Riesling were blended with 15% Sauvignon Blanc. I wondered whether gooseberry would be a theme. But after the third or fourth day I didn’t notice this any more. Perhaps it was confined to the corner of Rheinhessen with which I’d begun? I re-tasted some wines at the very end, and the greenness had largely vanished.
I’d formed a theory to explain it: growers told me of uneven flowering which led to uneven ripening within clusters. If one pressed whole-clusters (and didn’t nitpick through them to remove any unripe berries) one had a combination of certain very ripe, almost overripe grapes, along with little stunted green grapes. As is my wont, I ran this idea past each subsequent grower I visited, but when few if any confirmed it, I let it drop.
But don’t start thinking 2004 is unripe, or even that it’s less ripe than 2003: far from it. 2004 dramatizes the difference between summer-ripened fruit and autumn-ripened fruit. But in many instances must-weights were identical, or very close. Yet the 100° Oechsle of 2004 tastes different than the 100° Oechsle of 2003. In fact it doesn’t taste at all like one expects “100-degree” fruit will taste. This is in the Vendange Tardive region, folks, and you have every right to expect intensity and the flavors of super-ripeness. Only you won’t get them. Instead the wines have that wonderful lift and crunch. Those of you for whom the 2003s were too massive will be at home again with the ‘04s.
Though late-picking was the key, you couldn’t go too late; many spoke of a sudden onset of over-ripeness (“dull brown berries,” sometimes without botrytis, other times with a “wet” botrytis that didn’t concentrate the fruit). 2004s also have a uniformly high color for young Rieslings. I wonder if it’s something in the vintage (perhaps the skins?) or if it demonstrates a recent tendency to do away with fining and/or to use less sulfur. Time will tell.
One important aspect of these tastings should be noted: from early February until mid March the weather was unusually cold and snowy. The wines crept along in a dozy stupor. When I tasted Strub’s wines again 24 days later they had opened dramatically. “I spoke with Helmut Dönnhoff,” Walter said, “and he said the same; the wines are changing every day. He wishes you could taste them again.” Me too!
2004 was the second year when irrigation was permitted. There’s quite a schism about it. Most are opposed, others are agnostic, some are in favor. I do not have an opinion, but am tempted by the anti faction.
Some ancillary features of 2004: It is nothing less than a GREAT VINTAGE for Scheurebe. Yaaaaaayyyyy!!!!! I didn’t taste a single one I didn’t absolutely love. They are arched-back, spittin’ and hissin’ feral sharp-toothed Scheus, like Rieslings on a peyote binge.
2004 is, astonishingly, a fabulous vintage for a grape the Germans almost never get right: Gewürztraminer. (This suggests it’ll also be remarkable in Alsace; you read it here first.) “Because they have acidity!” said many growers. But that’s not it exactly. It’s because they have restraint and outline, and because somehow the finest aspects of varietal fruit are emphasized; the roses and the lychee, in a form almost demure and elegant.
2004 is simply a GREAT vintage for Eiswein, the majority of which were gathered either the 10th or 20th of December from perfect clean fruit. These have never been so pure, nor had such gorgeous fruit. A few flirted with excessive acidity, but only a few. Most of them concentrated two signature-flavors of the vintage—lime and plum— into knee-buckling elixirs of haunting beauty.
Time to talk flavor.
Ripe-green. Ripe-green. Concentrated lime, quince, apple, mirabelle, balsam, wintergreen; these are the words appearing throughout my notes. Just lip-smacking textures, bracing and juicy; you almost need a bib to get through a glass, cuz these babies will make you salivate. And there’s something beyond clarity in them, like one of those days so absurdly clear you can tell the color of a bird’s eyes from 100 yards away.
The vintage is, in short, loveable, reliable, charming and good. We rarely speak in terms of good in this business, have you noticed? Everything has to be great, awesome, riveting, blah blah blah, and suddenly good isn’t good enough. It’s true, the old saying: the great is the enemy of the good. 2004 is a vintage as utterly thoroughly good as any I can remember. It contains many great wines, no doubt. But a vintage contains two truths, if you will. One is some theoretical sum of the number of great wines divided by their degree of greatness, while the other is a slower thing to form, like waiting for a photograph to form in the developing fluid. It’s a common denominator, if you will, both of style and of “quality,” and you don’t average it out from your “scores.” By that reckoning I’d have to say I do not recall a vintage when the lowest-common-denominator was as high as in 2004. And I want to restore the value of the word good, so that we no longer use it to damn with faint praise.
Again I have to emphasize, all opinions are based on my actual tasting from growers within my portfolio (plus a few others)—I can’t presume to speak for the whole magilla. Though this is what I taste each year, so I’m able to compare apples to apples.
Which regions are best? All of them. Though if you’re a slut for slate you’ll be giddy with gaiety over the 2004 Mosels.
2004 is also a vintage in which many estates made the best wines I can recall them making. There are many dramatic improvements at many addresses. Maybe it’s a happy coincidence, maybe it’s the vintage. In any case, here’s a list of the most strikingly improved estates in this offering:
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KRUGER-RUMPF (Stefan’s best vintage, period. Don’t miss them!)
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EUGEN MÜLLER
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DARTING (their best vintage since 1998)
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KERPEN
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REUSCHER-HAART
I mentioned 1998 in connection with Darting, and the comparison may be apropos for 2004 in general. I recall similar mineral density in the young ‘98s, similar “green” tones and clarity. And depending what happens to the mysterious and reclusive 1996s, 1998 may turn out to be the 2nd best vintage of the nineties—so this is high praise.
I want to draw attention to certain remarkable wines, and will indicate them here. I have deliberately eschewed the likes of Catoir (who showed one of the greatest vintages they’ve ever made) and Dönnhoff (who was Dönnhoff!), because you already know these wines are great. Here are a few I’m pulling out of the shadows:
THE WINE OF THE VINTAGE IN THIS COLLECTION IS:
THE AUSLESE OF THE VINTAGE IN THIS COLLECTION IS:
THE SCHEUREBE OF THE VINTAGE IN THIS COLLECTION IS:
THE BIGGEST SURPRISES OF THE VINTAGE ARE:
THE KABINETT OF THE VINTAGE IS:
Schmitt-Wagner Longuicher Maximiner Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett
THE GREATEST WINES YOU’D LIKELY OVERLOOK ARE:
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Bernhard Frei-Laubersheimer Fels Gewürztraminer Spätlese
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Wagner-Stempel Siefersheimer Höllberg Riesling Auslese
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Adam Dhron Hofberg Riesling Spätlese
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Dr Deinhard Deidesheimer Grainhübel Riesling Auslese
AND FINALLY, THE SINGLE BEST VALUE IN THIS OFFERING IS:
I am really jazzed with 2004. I can’t wait to taste them again!
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