Selbach-Oster & Merkelbach

I’ll keep this brief, as the tasting report is running to nearly 13,000 words. It was always an all-day task, tasting the new vintage at Selbach, even working fast, and that was (usually) just a single vintage, and didn’t include Merkelbach, to whom we made a separate visit. It’s both a lot of wines and also a lot of consequential wines. There were very few that let me “move along,” because there always seemed to be something interesting – at the very least – to slow me down.

I’d wager all of us importers had an agency like this. A close friend. An uncommonly sensible thinker. A type of wine with which one was instinctively aligned, simpatico. A go-to person when one needed wisdom, or an answer to a question or a riddle. It would become a mission with producers like that. At least it did for me. That is because I like vintners who make useful, truthful wines, which strike me as the basis from which valid greatness can emerge. Alas, such wines are seldom seductive.

Enjoy the read.