AT LAST! SAMPLES FROM KRUGER-RUMPF

“At last,” because I haven’t been able to taste these properly (at home) since I started these tastings in 2021. I did speed-taste twice at the estate, but of course it’s not the same. The last time, in October 2024, I was able to select my favorites, and holy of holies, they were sent to me. If you wonder at the consistent plaudits I’m giving the wines, these were the best and/or the wines I most wished to taste again, properly.

I first shipped the wines in <gulp> 1989, having ventured to the lower Nahe in search of its great (and unknown) terroirs. Kruger-Rumpf was certainly the leading grower in those parts, and Stephan Rumpf was an agreeable fellow to work with, by which I mean he’d let me taste everything and cherry-pick my favorites. Eventually we’d work together on some of the blends, and things hummed along for the (then) 11-hectare estate.

As the generations proceeded the winery grew, as often transpires.  Generations transitioned. Georg Rumpf was ambitious, enterprising and dynamic, and Rumpf became a “rising star” as these things are identified. Each year there were more and more wines to consider, and tasting became something of a decathalon. I could still find plenty of wine for my offerings, and I noted a steady upward climb in overall quality – but it took selectivity. It was work.

The wines I scooped out of the total production were not just a measure of my adorable connoisseurship but also a practical necessity. As the estate grew (now 40 hectares) the number of individual wines became unwieldy. I was pleased to see the gathering reputation the winery was earning, yet I also tended, somewhat reluctantly, to demur. Georg Rumpf was finding me incomprehensibly hard to please.  That made me wistful, because I admired and liked him and the wines were constantly improving – yet something made me, reluctantly,  veer from the consensus.

I no longer do; the wines are (as they say) All That, and I think it has to do with a new and larger physical winery whereby the cellarmaster(s) have many fewer technical and logistical constraints. It shows in the wines, and remarkably it shows in the wines in what I think is a difficult vintage (2023) where I again question much of the received wisdom.

I’ll try to explain. I lay great emphasis on texture and clarity and relish a degree of digital crispness, and multi-pixilated high-def precision that other tasters might find “sterile.” I think it signifies class, and even before I consider a flavor (or flavors) I’m responding to a wine’s basic expressiveness and articulation. Until the last (maybe) five years my sense of Rumpf was that many of the wines were exciting and often richly satisfying, but a final scintilla of definition and class was missing.

If it sounds imponderable, it probably is. I can’t supply a recipe for it, and it’s feeble to say “you know it when you taste it,” but alas, you do.

But each time I visited, the wines drew closer to my (subjective) ideal, and when I was there nine months ago I felt they had arrived. To be sure, there are peaks and valleys – how could it be otherwise in an estate that size?  But the best wines were both greater in number and truly elite in quality.

I freely confess I culled my favorites to taste again. Other than the two Spätburgunders I had tasted them before. I’ve had a whole bunch of fun the last 4-5 days, considering these lovely beings with the time and attention they deserve..