WTN: A long day's journey into Scheurebe (dinner with Salil)

[David M. Bueker]

Had Salil Benegal over to the house for dinner last night. We prepared a grilled pork tenderloin marinated in hoisin & sake, and Salil taight us how to make a paneer dish with peas. Yum!

Not surprisingly we drank German wines.

2006 Kruger-Rumpf Pittersberg Riesling Grosses Gewachs
This is the kind of wine I hope for when I pick up one of the ridiculously tall and heavy Grosses Gewachs bottles. It has textural richness (much in the vein of Austrian Riesling by the way - tell me why the Germans needed to duplicate a niche style already established elsewhere?), mineral precision & just enough fruit to carry the wine past austerity and into a realm where it is good on its own & with food. I like this wine very much, and it's not in the stratospheric price range of most Grosses Gewachs bottlings.

1996 Donnhoff Niederhauser Hermannshohle Riesling Spatlese
The cork snapped in two & the wine was orange in color. It wasn't dead, but the oxidative and cooked aromas spoke of a badly compromised bottle. I've had great Donnhoff wines from '89, '90, '92. '94, '95 and every vintage from '97 to '07, but every single 1996 I have opened (from many sources) has been fatally compromised in one way or another.

2007 Emerich Schonleber Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Spatlese
Bright, fruity, refreshing & develops complexity with air. I very much like the immediate appeal of this, but for me it lacks a bit of energy, a bit of zest, much like the majority of 2007s to my palate. It's very enjoyable to drink (something that is universally true of the 2007s), but I prefer the energy of 2001, 2002 and 2004 wines.

Dinner finished, we settled in to watch the classic comedy Young Frankenstein which Salil had never seen. We also began a frustrating process of opening sweet wines until we found a good one to have as dessert.

2002 Selbach-Oster Zeltinger Himmelreich Riesling Eiswein*
The color of this wine exactly matched the color of the Donnhoff from earlier in the evening. It smelled a little better, but still was dominated by cooked, canned fruit and simple sugar. Given the clarity and precision of Selbach Eisweins it was not hard to identify this as badly damaged.

1998 Wittmann Westhofener Steingrube Albalonga Beerenauslese
Also a rather deep color, but that was not surprising given the grape and the level of botrytis that was clearly evident in the wine. Unfortunately it smelled and tasted of nothing more than a dried out orange with clove dust. Incurably boring.

1996 Kurt Darting Durkheimer Fronhof Scheurebe Trockenbeerenauslese
Finally! This is all the crazy Scheurebe tropical fruit and spice that can possibly be crammed into a 500 ml bottle (oh thank heavens for a 500 ml bottle). Pristine fruit is carried by some of the most outrageous acids I have encountered in German wine. The acidity in this wine was so high that it was actually giving me a sore throat. But for this beauty I suffered through it. Amazing stuff from first sip through the long, spiced mango finish. I nominate Darting as the best producer of QPR sweet wines in the known universe.

A very fun evening as always, aside from the off bottles. The food was delicious (and I need to learn how to grill pork like that - that tenderloin was really fabulous), and the wines that were 'on' were awesome - although having damaged bottles of Donnhoff and Selbach's Eiswein on one night was really gutting.

Among the wines that were in good shape though - I thought the Pittersberg was fantastic. Really bright and precise with a really refreshing green apple/citrus fruit profile infused with minerals that was particularly enjoyable in this heat. Much more reasonably priced too than a lot of the other Grosses Gewachs I've had from bigger names and every bit as enjoyable.
The Halenberg was an excellent wine if a slight letdown for me - I had tried this a month ago at a Riesling dinner in NY, was floored by the electric fruit and minerality in that and had very high expectations for this bottle. Still really awesome with complex and precise fruit flavours, a mineral component that started to pick up in intensity with some air and more acidity than I've found in a lot of other 07s. I need to drink more Schonleber!
David also opened a half of the 2007 Selbach-Oster Zeltinger Schlossberg Riesling Spatlese along with the food - a really gorgeous wine with a sense of real freshness to the lime, apple and slate flavours, a bit more roundness/richness than I normally expect from Schlossberg although really enjoyable as usual with good acid and a bit of spritz giving it some lift and a long, slightly creamy finish.
The Darting Scheurebe was a crazy wine and a great way to end the evening after the Eiswein/Albalonga TBA disappointments. Even at that level of ripeness and botrytis it was clear this could only be Scheu with those wild spicy aromatics of mango and 50 other tropical fruits, sage and honey. Incredibly intense but in no way heavy thanks to the massive acidity in that wine. I definitely need to start drinking some more sweet wines from Darting - so consistent from what I've had from him thus far, and amazing value.