Philippe Pacalet

A couple of years ago, a friend introduced me to one of Philippe Pacalet’s wines, bringing his 2006 Pommard to a large wine dinner — one of those events with a dozen people and numerous bottles moving rapidly around the table.

In between some outstanding Rieslings from Austria and Germany, and various Bordeaux and Rhones, Pacalet’s ’06 Pommard stood out as one of the most thrilling young Burgundies I’d encountered in some time. I was struck by its wonderfully complex and perfumed fragrance, and the combination of pure red fruit and various savory, non-fruited flavors, all conveyed with a lightness of touch that I always look for in Burgundy but don’t find often enough.

A few months later, I encountered another of Pacalet’s wines at a dinner; the same vintage, a different village (the details escape me now), and a very different wine altogether. This time it had a cloudy, murky appearance and lacked balance, coming across thin and sour with raspy, unpleasant acidity. The wine was barely drinkable; the fruit sour and finishing bitter and the acidity giving it an awkward spritzy sensation on the tongue.

Pacalet’s wines can be incredibly frustrating. Occasionally, they can be downright undrinkable. I’ve come across other bottles that showed the same shrillness and sourness, and heard of a few instances where the wine refermented in bottle or oxidized remarkably quickly. I’d attribute some of these issues to his “natural” winemaking approach, which is largely hands-off, involving minimal use of sulfur and that too, added only at bottling.

There’s a distinctive house style consistent across all the wines, yet there can be tremendous variance from one bottle to the next of a particular wine. It’s become something of a cliché to talk about how Burgundy can be a gamble to explore, but there are times when each wine from Pacalet can seem like a roll of the dice. The wines are usually light bodied, pale in color and often slightly cloudy from a lack of fining and filtering. They can be challenging and frustrating occasionally, but good bottles are incredibly fragrant with flavors that run more towards fresh red fruits and berries, occasionally showing some citrus-like elements with higher-toned herbal or floral accents.

And when the wines are “on,” they can be truly thrilling; constantly changing and developing with air, and conveying their flavors with a remarkable sense of purity and finesse. Below the fold are tasting notes from various bottles that I’ve encountered over the last few months.

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The steep Erdener Treppchen

I’ve long felt that there are very few wine regions that match the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer for consistently providing consumers with outstanding value and refreshment. The 2011s poured by producers such as Selbach-Oster and Willi Schaefer at the Terry Theise/Skurnik German and Austrian portfolio tasting last month reinforced that view.

It’s remarkable to survey the list of truly outstanding producers in the Mosel that are producing top quality Rieslings these days. Old established estates such as Egon Müller, J.J. Prüm, von Schubert/Maximin Grünhaus, and Zilliken have long been viewed among the standard bearers in the region, and the wines continue to be of outstanding quality at those addresses. Yet there are plenty of other less talked about estates — such as Selbach-Oster and Schloss Lieser — who have released some outstanding lineups  in recent vintages worth noticing.

Most heartening, though, are stories of the likes of AJ Adam or Daniel Vollenweider — younger growers who have recently acquired parcels of great (but long underperforming) vineyards and have rapidly progressed to releasing some of the most exciting wines in the Mosel each year. Tasting through the Theise portfolio of growers is a reminder just how high the quality levels are now, and that one doesn’t need to only return to old, established elite estates in the region such as Prüm or Haag for top quality Mosel Riesling given the quality of wines being made at estates such as Meulenhof.

Notes follow below the fold.

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Leitz's Rüdesheimer Berg Schlossberg (castle hill) vineyard

More notes from the recent Terry Theise/Skurnik portfolio tasting in New York, this time from the lineups poured by Johannes Leitz and Andreas Spreitzer.

Leitz seems to get stronger with each vintage — last year, Gault Millau named him its winemaker of the year — and his 2011s again represent excellent values with tremendous consistency across all styles and price points, and some outstanding wines. Spreitzer also presented a very good collection, though without quite the consistency that Leitz showed.

Tasting notes below the fold:

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Vineyards in Nahe from the Lemberg

This is the first of a few pieces surveying the 2011 vintage in Germany and Austria. These impressions are from a tasting of the Terry Theise/Skurnik German and Austrian portfolio in New York. Many of these wines were just-recently bottled samples or barrel samples provided by Skurnik or by the growers; none were tasted blind, and in many cases some of the growers were present at the tasting to offer additional insights on the wines and vintage.

Broad generalizations first: 2011 comes across as a very pleasant, fruit-forward vintage with generous ripeness and moderate acidity. This isn’t a vintage for acid-heads like 2010 or 2008; the majority of the wines (from the Mosel, Rheingau, and Nahe) were fairly plush and easy drinking, though by no means soft or unstructured. The ripeness and lower acidity meant that very few of the wines sold as Kabinett actually tasted like it; many were a little heavy or sweet and closer to Spätlese or small Auslese in their sweetness and density. There were a number of outstanding sweeter wines at higher prädikats, but the vintage seems strongest for dry wines with most of the trocken Rieslings showing wonderful depth and balance.

Among specific producers, it was no surprise that Dönnhoff – considered by many to be among Germany’s top growers – again showed a number of outstanding wines at all styles and levels of sweetness. The lineup that left the greatest impression though was Jakob Schneider’s, who has in recent years been producing some truly outstanding wines from the Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle vineyard at remarkably low prices. The Kertz feinherb Riesling and his Hermannshöhle Spätlese were particularly fine values.

Tasting notes below the fold.

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