WEINGUT CARL LOEWEN
2021
Reflecting back on my merchant years it strikes me that you never really know why some things ignite and others don’t. Sure, the “right” reviews in the “right” places drive (“the wrong?”) attention to an estate, but when you look at the more organic elements of creating demand, I think you need a platoon of salespeople who’ve become, for whatever reason, jazzed.
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When I first met Loewens they were a young couple on something of a quest to champion the excellence of several great sites upstream from the “known-great names.” I would write that Leiwener Laurentiuslay and Thörnicher Ritsch deserved the same renown as Wehlener Sonnenuhr, and the reason they didn’t receive it was due to the lack of a “flagship” estate, a Prüm or an Egon Müller, a situation Loewens hoped to remedy.
Loewens enjoyed a certain renown among insiders, but only one of the standard guides elevated them to their true stature. Despite remarkably moderate prices, my colleagues remained “cool” to the estate, and so we schlumped along without gaining traction.
Loewen was and remains a lover of ambient-yeast fermentations – spontis in the parlance – and while I agreed with his view that “Behind an early shroud is a fragrance you cannot attain any other way,” the market has neither the luxury nor the patience to consider the fullness of time when they accept or decline a wine based on an admittedly unattractive sample. Honestly,I wouldn’t either.
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Yet the wines were beautiful and the vineyards remained undervalued.
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Then two decisive things happened.
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One, a legacy-estate in the village of Longuich had to sell, as attempts to motivate the reluctant heir to take it over had failed. This estate – another one known to insiders – was Schmitt-Wagner, and the legacy was solidified by the presence of a remarkable number of very old ungrafted vines, planted between 1896 and the early 20th century. Loewen prevailed among a number of interested buyers, and the estate – and its magnificent vines – were enfolded into Weingut Carl Loewen.
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It wasn’t only the ancient vines that mattered; it was also the presence of a third great site in the stable. It conferred a critical mass of Grand Cru land that was more difficult to overlook.
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And then came Christopher Loewen, with all his energy and his talent and his youthful derring-do, not to mention he spoke excellent English and was easy on the eyes. He took what to all appearances was a seamless place beside his parents in moving the winery along, and he took a perhaps more conspicuous place in our markets moving their sales along.
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And now I pause, because you never actually know who or what is responsible for developments in a wine estate. Correlation doesn’t equal causality, etc., but I can confidently say that since Christopher arrived the dry wines have improved in leaps and bounds, and all the wines have obtained an expressive force that creates a WOW effect in tasters. And yet, the first innovation he spearheaded was conservative; he took a portion of the harvest from a site planted in 1896, and made a separate wine from that fruit as it would have been made in 1896. Two things were born: A wine, and just as important, a Story.
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The estate was no longer just one of my Strange Preoccupations; it was attracting buzz.
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Now it is eight years later, and Loewen isn’t an insider-tip any more. The wines have to be allocated, the press are breathless….and then we come to the wines.
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In general Loewen’s wines belong to the traditional, that is, sponti and Fuder (the 1,100-liter cask used along the Mosel) as opposed to cultured yeast and stainless steel. That sponti-Fuder language has several dialects. It can sometimes feel atavistic, not exactly “rustic” but certainly rural, and this is where the most stubborn young stinkers come from. I have a soft spot for this style, and the less approachable it is, the tenderer I feel.
But many growers have learned to tame the sponti (none more virtuosically than Johannes Selbach, in my view), to encourage its more attractive features and suppress (or eliminate) its obnoxious ones. Loewen is moving into this group, though the nature of the 2020 wines encourages a fundamentally sleek sort of polish, and it’s dubious to generalize based on this highly particular vintage.
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That said, you’ll see; I found these to be a heart-rending group of Rieslings. They are full of a delicate paradox, or more accurately, paradoxes; they are as clear as can be yet they’re also soft-lit; they have all the evocations of the sponti dialect at its best yet they seem like their flavors were arranged by tiny tweezers; they are para-sensual but too expressive to be mystic; they feel gentle but act forceful; they have everything we desire in Grand Cru Riesling yet they’re as lithe as gymnasts.
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Maybe Christopher is moving past expressiveness for its own sake and into greater concern for how the text is read, how the score is played. Maybe! One can only surmise, and when I blurt the question to a vintner they either don’t know what I’m talking about or they give the answer they think I’m looking for. Thus if I tell you that Christopher’s impact on his family’s wines is to seek greater and greater precision and polish, the most I can say is, it could well be true….
2020 Maximin Klosterlay (full name Detzenheimer Maximin Klosterlay Riesling) +
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I am inferring Trocken based on the 12.5% alc, but the Loewens do something so manifestly sensible I’m amazed that other growers don’t do it: They leave “Trocken” off the label to give themselves latitude and flexibility to leave a wine as-is, if it’s perfect, and if it’s “over the line” for Trocken (according to the EU functionaries who wrote the wine legislation) as this one is, I am told. If so, it isn’t by much.
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er Cru right along the Mosel, on especially blue slate, tending to give precise minerally wines, wines of explication rather than hedonism. Works for me! And this 2020 smells perfectly wonderful. It’s loaded with the sponti soulfulness, the pliant texture clanging off the slatey chew, and the finish is like some ancient smoke rising out of the vents and fissures, as if there were a fire underground.
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From the Jancis glass it’s like a different recording of the same symphony. The aromas, for all their detail and clarity, are also euphoric, the wine is entirely pixilated on the palate, and the finish is quite pointed. It will be the best glass for an older version of this wine, in the 6-8 year range. For now I’d rather suppress a little explicitness in order to get a more genial mélange.
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In essence the wine is captivating, with all that key-lime and chocolate sponti juju, and with mineral you feel like you’re seeing under a microscope. Your palate feels arthroscopic. There are notes of peppercorns you think you might be dreaming. Everything is narrated so precisely, it’s as though the wine is an audiobook of itself. It’s so sinuously delicious from my little Spiegelau, I’m looking around to make sure I’m not breaking any laws, the way I feel about this little beast.
From this wine alone I believe it is reasonable to establish that Loewen belongs to a very small society of growers who can do a precise sponti, one that isn’t a big atavistic chocolatey slobber – which by the way I like – but which sets out from a place of elegance and discretion.
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Tasting for the 3rd time now, and adding the MacNeil Crisp & Fresh to the mix, the wine is ludicrously expressive. I shrink from using “gorgeous” to describe a wine so filigree, a wine with such crystalline diction, but to me those can be gorgeous qualities, flavors so chiseled and hewn.
With a fourth and final taste, the wine has – counterintuitively – grown more brash and salty. No matter, it’s still excellent.
2020 Maximin Herrenberg GG (full name Longuich Maximin Herrenberg Riesling Trocken) +
Still only 12.5% alc – god I love the Mosel.
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Following a remarkable and compelling fragrance, the first impression is racy and brisk. But very slowly, with fastidious deliberateness, a large mid palate emerges.
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This will be studied over the days, but at first glance it has the spearmint typical for the site, along with a measure of the deep-shade green that characterizes the (upcoming) Ritsch GG. A measure, mind you. Because this wine is also a splendid shriek of whites and grays (or to be literal, white pepper and stones), ginger and pastis and juniper, but as that mid-palate emerges it’s a very spicy apple, a hint of blown-out candle, and fragrant ferns and cress.
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And for all its thickness of extract it is also, and miraculously, weightless.
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I spend almost no time considering what or how many plusses I’ll assign to a wine. The wine knows before I do. But here I find I am pausing, because this is clearly a “better” wine than the foregoing, but at this moment it isn’t a better showing wine, and I won’t have means to “judge” until I’ve tasted it at least 4-5 more times over a period of days.
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Days later, the wine has barely moved. From the MacNeil it’s saltier but not really any more “revealed.” There’s a quivering sort of energy, incipient power, and the precision of a champion fencer. But right now it’s in a jittering white sleep.
2020 Ritsch GG (Full name Thörnicher Ritsch Riesling Trocken) ++
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And once again we rejoice in 12.5% alc. Maximum flavor with minimum alcohol is the recipe for the highest satisfaction.
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Cards on the table: Apart from my professional appraisals and apart from my agreement with the consensus of the greatest Mosel vineyards, I have two great subjective favorites. Zeltinger Schlossberg (as rendered by Johannes Selbach) is one, and Thörnicher Ritsch is the other. So if I am ga-ga with bliss, well then that’s just how it has to be.
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As far as I can tell, this is the scenario by which this wine is consumed. 1) Gather a friend, or friends. 2) Open and pour the wine. 3) Start drinking the wine. 4) Babble poetically. If that fourth part stymies you (“What if I’m not poetic enough?”) here, I’ll show you how it’s done.
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Banish poesie! It will come back if it’s needed, but you must never force flowery language. That’s honestly just icky. What you must do, is just to release your mind to imagine, and that begins with feeling what you feel, and then making a little story about what you feel.
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For me there are two veins within which this all might flow. One begins with astonishment. How-the-fuck can such a thing even be? (Apropos of poesie!) That vein steers you to the ethereal, which isn’t for everyone. The other vein sends you an image, and sometimes this image is a cognate to the wine.
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Here’s an example. I had an image of a Christmas tree. We have balsam firs here in New England, and if you get a fresh one you can’t believe the fragrance. But this was a rare tree, even for a balsam fir. Following my narrative vein, it was the tree you bring home at the end of a year when your biopsy came back negative, and after five years they tell you you’re cancer-free. Your oldest child is engaged. Your team won the championship. You helped a protégé land a dream job. This is a year it was good to be you, and for some reason this is the sweetest Christmas tree you ever carried through the door.
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That’s how this wine is for me. You get to make up your own story.
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Regardless, Ritsch is green to a point of near-absurdity. It’s as though the world were napped with emeralds. Like everything was limes. Except for the couple things that were chocolate – there’s that sponti thing again. In this wine, slate is a strong inference but nothing more. What marks this wine is its immensely consoling mid palate “sweetness,” a kind of power to heal, to reassure. Some of that comes courtesy of a helpful breath of Fuder.
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Day-2 it was a stiletto riot. So green it would clear your sinuses just to look at the glass. You really can’t figure out a world that could give such a wine.
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I have to tell you this. We have a crabapple tree out back, and I’d just taken a glass of this wine onto the deck to taste in the fresh air. Sitting there, I noticed an unusual shape on one of the interior branches. It couldn’t be a bird because it wasn’t moving. Birds are always moving, at least a little.
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Except it was a bird. It was a dove, and it was precisely the same color as the branches, and she (I’m letting myself believe she is a “she”) spent a good five minutes, barely moving. She is perched over a squirrel’s nest I assumed was abandoned. She is fixedly immovable, except to swivel her small head every few seconds. But now her head is tucked in, the way birds do when they’re sleeping. So I have a new neighbor, a little dove taking a mid-afternoon siesta overlooking a squirrel’s nest. And while I am with her, I am tasting this eerie lichen being of a wine.
Ritsch is feline, but it’s a cat that loves you like a dog does. It is spirit-kin, by the way, to Leo Alzinger’s Steinertal Rieslings. And the wine aced the most difficult test of all – I couldn’t help myself, and swallowed it.
2020 1896 (Full name Longuich Maximin Herrenberg Riesling) ++
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In the years since this wine was first made, it has taken its place among the Mosel icon-wines. From part of a vineyard of 6,000 vines planted in 1896, ungrafted, the wine is made as it would have been made when planted. My catalogues will explain.
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The production is tiny because it is incredibly labor intensive, and it’s becoming a unicorn-wine. This is sad but necessary; Loewens can’t make more if they want to manage logistically (and financially) and so what started as a little tribute has taken on a life of its own.
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If you know Schloss Gobelsburg’s Tradition wines – at least as they were until this year – you’ll suss what’s going on here. The question is, as I approach the wine breathlessly, what have we got this time?
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This wine is usually a romantic slow-dance between “sweet” inferential and allusive tertiary notes and the mints and spices of the vineyard. Those tertiaries are partly from oxidation and partly from the palpable density of old-vines, and when the dancers are in a state of sublimity there is a kind of gliding, that place in love when our separate skins dissolve.
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What seems to be the case in 2020 – and I have to affirm this in the coming days – is that the vintage has subdued those “sweet” tertiary notes, at least out of the gate. What is strikingly beautiful is the extra pittance of sweetness that teleports the wine into another context entirely. What’s incipient is what I’d (fancifully) call the breath of the ancients, and even if you’re dismayed by the phrase it’s a stunning quality that can bring you to your knees. There are teasing glimpses of it here, but I am also peering for it.
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Yet, to assume it isn’t there or it’s just my romantic yearning, I’d have to accept that the explicitness and precision of 2020 distorted this wine in a basic way. I’m not willing. Over a few days’ tasting I found the wine stirring drowsily, bringing forth the old-vines “sweetness” but also an innate reserve, a quiet deacon.
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Meanwhile, my little dove has stirred and is starting to groom herself and preen. I looked at her as I sipped this wine. It isn’t often that a bird sits in a single place for so long. When I came back inside my laptop had put itself to sleep. I sat there outside with bird, with nest bird finds interesting, with tree that holds bird, with breeze that flutters through tree, with sweet late summer smells carried by breeze, with glass with wine and with sky and parading clouds and with a music that wasn’t there except in my mind, and the wine absorbed all of it and all of it absorbed the wine, the wine belonged to the world, as I also tried to do. This pensive and dutiful bird; she has a life! My god…a life. All this aching divinity, and only us to name it.
2020 Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett (full name Longuicher Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett) +
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A steady citizen of my cellar thanks to its perfect zippy balance and its ridiculous substance. The “Herrenberg” vineyard is just upslope from the Maximiner Herrenberg, the vines are also ungrafted, and over 100 years old. And the wine is “just” a Kabinett with 9.5% alc, and priced…I think it’s fair to say…perhaps too attractively?
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It’s a microburst of flavors rushing brightly through the air like streamers and sparkler-light; you imagine if you held your ear to the glass you could hear it buzz and sizzle. It’s a dead-serious Nobility-Of-Terroir tickled into a fit of giggles. It is serious, serious fun!
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And even in contrast to the flight of dry wines that preceded it, the wine is not markedly sweet. (That’s old vines at work…) The candy-cane outer skin melts away immediately and reveals a salty, spicy core, something like a grappa of Riesling yet lighter than air. Take a swallow and you’d think you’d have the helium voice. The ’20 vintage exaggerates these qualities, perhaps, yet regardless of where this wine stands in one’s sober-evaluations-of quality, I can tell you this: It has more uses than all the wines that preceded it.
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It should be clear by now how much I love the great dry German Rieslings, and that I acknowledge the huge strides they have taken in the last 12-15 years – and in some cases, a lot longer. They join a marvelous community of dry Rieslings; indeed they are often nobility in this kingdom. But this needs to be said, and said and said, that a wine like this one STANDS ALONE IN THE WORLD, no one else can make anything like it, and it is both galvanically beautiful and amazingly useful. Not long ago this entire genre of wine was imperiled, but recently its virtues seem to have been rediscovered by a lot of trend-setting estates. Climate warming has made it harder to produce these little snips of gossamer, but people are trying.
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Now admittedly, not every Kabinett can be made from 100+ year-old vines in a Grand Cru. And yet Loewen’s choice to continue producing this wine, when a “GG” they could make from the same fruit would fetch three to four times the price, is a testament to a singular gift of Riesling, and anyone who does it should receive a shiny red wagon or a box of chocolates.
2020 Ritsch Riesling Auslese (full name Thörnicher Ritsch Riesling Auslese) ++
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If you’re a Loewen follower you’ll have noticed the Laurentiuslay Spätlese is absent. They didn’t send it. Possibly it wasn’t ready, possibly I asked them to focus more on the dry wines, and the case-of-6 was full. Whatever the reason, I miss it, and I want you to know it was always an important Mosel Spätlese for me, year in and year out for at least two decades.
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Superficially the aroma here is perturbed by SO2 and botrytis, but when a minute has passed we’re left with something astonishingly refined and yummy. And curiously not very sweet, despite a good amount of residual sugar – I really don’t like revealing the number because then that’s the only thing you’ll taste. Suffice to say that most modern Spätlesen from the Rhine and Nahe are sweeter than this, and when I was starting to say this was “near-perfect Auslese” I had to pause, because this, simply, is near-perfect Riesling.
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I think it’s botrytis that swallows its sweetness, and only really exceptional botrytis has that capability. The result is a delicate and buoyant Auslese, a parfait of green, every green flavor spun into lace, entering your palate as though it were shot through a syringe of leaves. I mean, seriously, if someone could make a floss that tasted like this I’d floss my damn teeth twelve times a day.
2023
2021 Pinot Blanc Trocken
After the essential varietal perfection of the Darting, here is precisely the opposite – anti-varietal, all terroir. As such it smells much more like a Mosel wine than it does like any grape variety, not only “Pinot Blanc.” It offers the grower a chance to make a dry wine with (usually) lower acidity, and adds a nuance to the flavor spectrum they can present.
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This wine is exceptionally good. It reminds me of Jean Boxler’s superb Pinot Blancs from the Grand Cru Brand, with which I’d flummox my wine pals, who couldn’t fathom how something so minerally could be anything but Riesling. This wine has such lovely angularity and so much savor and salt it gives us Riesling’s articulation without Riesling’s particular attributes. The texture is rusk-y and crackery, and unlike Riesling, the calligraphy this shows is analogue.
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It’s like crepe-paper that crinkles when you handle it. It shows much of the flavor a wine can show without showing fruit. It adds to a growing community of fascinating Pinot Blancs that could prompt us to reconsider the expressive options for that variety.
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I will observe, though, that its pleasures are a kind of cerebral delight in the improbable. I enjoy being fascinated but it’s different from drinking something yummy – or for that matter, drinky. I look forward to seeing it in a riper tasting vintage. And yet, even so, my final encounter with the wine was at odds with that impression. It slipped down most deliciously and interestingly; it had been open six days by then, with about a third of the contents remaining.
2021 Riesling Alte Reben
Several notes: one, the word “Trocken” does not appear, though the wine could well be Trocken, and that is because Loewens don’t actually care which side of the line this wine falls on and by omitting the T-word they keep their options open. You can imagine how happy this makes me. Then, we have 70-year old vines, 11.5% alc, and vinification in tank after a sponti ferment.
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It’s intensely salty. There’s a ton of the blue-slate flavor. It’s a bit thready, and the ’21 pointedness isn’t entirely subdued. With air a lilac-y thing arrives, that lingers into an umami-like tertiary finish in which a furtive whisper of RS is evident, and welcome.
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It was heartening to see how the classicists embraced the ’21 vintage as a return to earth after a preponderance of hot years, and they’re entitled to relish acidity if that’s their jam. But I think it’s worth asking which wines benefited and which were diminished by this highly particular year. This wine, for example, seems to show its best in warm years, when its acidity and minerality stand in contrast to the ever-present fruit ripeness. But an ultra-violet wine in an ultra-violet vintage risks being monochrome, a portrait in blue ice. But! This wine isn’t at all forbidding; it’s simply in a particular key signature. It has good hands but needs to trim its nails.
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There’s a certain complexity and more than a single dimension, but its cragginess is destined to be appreciated by aficionados of sober wines.
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On second glance the fragrances are almost feverishly scrupulous, as much Urgestein as slate per se. I still find the body too gaunt to carry a rather severe sourness, but I’m cool toward such things and others are not. The greater joys of the vintage lay in wait….
2021 Riesling Maximin Klosterlay +
A big plump diam cork refuses to fit back into the bottle. We also have the “1er Cru” insignia, and we’re back to Fuder. We remain free of “Trocken” and I remain delighted. I am also delighted by the rampantly slatey aromas.
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The wine is a rock-slide of slate, with the smoky charred overtone we see in certain sites (Apotheke eminent among them), and with so much substance and concentration we have no need to “allow” for asperitys, as this is simply a glace-de-viande of terroir.
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In place of the lilac we have roots and resinous herbs - vetiver and verbena and also a mass of lime and melisse. It’s Mosel at its most serious, and this time the edge of sourness is welcome in the context of its stunning concentration, which prevents it from feeling exposed.
The scent in the empty glass is an essence of what’s meant by Cru.
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Two days later there’s a subtle addition of the “blue” slate aroma that adds a euphoric note to this otherwise ruggedly smoky critter.
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My third and final pass seemed to confirm a sense I am forming about the ‘21s. This wine is adapting to oxygen predictably; its mid-palate expands as its initial fruit retreats, and as a rule we anticipate this and don’t object. But these ‘21s need every bit of fruit they can hold on to, and this wine was best freshly poured.
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Its best is, I must emphasize, very good.
2021 Laurentiuslay Riesling Alte Reben Trocken
Back label says “Leiwen” Laurentiuslay, and that the vines are up to 100 years old; it does not indicate either sponti or fuder. 11.5% alc.
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But cask is apparent! The site is about indirect mineral, inferred from the general earthiness, and about deeply anchored fruit that isn’t like any other Mosel site I know.
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Yet despite that fruit, I’ve never been persuaded that it suits a dry rendering. It makes a monumentally excellent Spätlese, and (to me) a confusing dry wine. Your taste for this will address your taste for cask – and for the chocolate aromas of the wild ferment.
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I’m like most people, I think; when I don’t like a wine I can’t imagine why anyone would like it, yet in this case I’m cool toward the wine but can easily imagine why another person would feel quite differently. There’s a lot that’s seductive in play, a lot of clinging richness for so little alcohol. I can’t really justify my aloofness, except to say the wine feels like it has its clothes on backwards.
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I’m now tasting it for the third time, and it’s the first time I’ve tasted it after tasting the regular Spätlese, which you will see is a masterpiece. I’m more persuaded than ever, that while there is much to appreciate about this Trocken wine, it feels like a foreign identity was imposed upon it.
2021 Maximin Herrenberg Riesling Alte Reben Trocken 1896 ++
Natural cork, 1er Cru insignia.
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Some day Christopher Loewen will explain to me why there is this wine and also a “GG” – I can only surmise the GG is from “younger” vines than these 127 year old kids.
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In any case this wine is masterly, minty, trippy with terroir, sleek as a paper-cut, otherworldly in its length and precision. Here the cask notes are almost gorgeous against the insane needle-point of flavor.
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But what exactly is happening here? The wine is far from ingratiating; why would someone like it? Let me take a stab at it.
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I suppose it begins with the arresting surgical cut of the front-palate, which presents as mint but not crudely so. Then, very quickly, a swell of flavor rises up from below such that the pointed first impression is suddenly carried by a mass of density that is paradoxically weightless, yet creates a tangible grip in which everything flies around – the sponti chocolate, the suavity of the casks, the crazy herbal high notes, the esoteric poise of flowers and stones (like a higher octave of the Pfalz GC Pechstein), and in the end a kind of fever of expressiveness, until you don’t know any more which is more haunted – the wine, or you.
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Is it easy to “get,” but is it easy to love? I mean, I wonder. It’s clearly outstanding wine, but I don’t envision folks clamoring for it. Is that elitist? I don’t know; is it? Some things you get sooner, some things you get later, and the nature of a wine like this is such as to bemuse the beginner – and therein lies an opportunity.
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I do not condescend to persons of ordinary taste. I have plenty of ordinary tastes myself. Understanding that, I’ll suggest that persons of ordinary taste in wine could feel like this is a class to which they weren’t invited. Nor need they have been! They can crash the course whenever they want to; no one will throw them out. But the fledgling, the “seeker,” the student who’s open to the unknown – and to the unknowable – could be catapulted forward, could think “Wait, wine can do this???” and could walk into a starry, backlit world, lit, in this case, by a bio-luminescence of terroir that offers just enough light to find one’s way around.
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So the answer to the question “How do you get people into this sort of wine?” is, a certain kind of person finds a way to it, inexorably, having (unconsciously) self-selected for refined and electrifying experience. Like y’all!
2021 Riesling “GG” Maximin Herrenberg
Back label adds “Longuich” and Trocken.
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It is, I confess, a different sort of aroma – thicker somehow. I’m not (yet) convinced the palate is better, but I just poured it. It’s pretty fervid from the Jancis glass. With air the whole thing grows more fervent, more “warmed,” and more tertiary. The open question is, to what degree do these things matter?
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I might change my mind about this, but the various perquisites of the “GG” idiom do not quite efface a sense that this wine isn’t balanced. If you were sitting at a mixing console you’d complain the sound was “toppy,” though you kept trying to fix it by boosting the mid-range.
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For the moment, having sipped three times, this is clumsy compared to the predecessor, which I have just poured again to ensure I’m not crazy. The GG is bigger, in that earnestly “important” way some GGs indicate, but apparently not better. If the days suggest otherwise, I’ll be the first to be relieved.
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Two days later, it’s clear what this GG seeks to do, clear that it’s an interesting wine in theory but also kind of stubbly and raw in practice. I think a riper vintage would “repair” what feels misaligned here. And finally, there is a truly outlandish cognate; the wine reminds me of certain vintages of Alzinger’s Steinertal Smaragd when you’re not sure whether it’s GV or Riesling, its jacket of “green” is so thick.
2021 “1896” Riesling ++
This is a tank-sample.
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By now you know the story of one of the Mosel’s most beautiful wines. Christopher and his father Karl-Josef have given the wine world a remarkable gift. (And a rare one; it’s basically a single fuder, so after samples and whatever the family places in its own cellar it’s what – eighty, ninety cases? If you get a few bottles, know that you’re lucky, and please, don’t waste this wine by making it a trophy. Calm down and love it, please.
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Other than the time-travel element – which other than “other than” is an especially lingering mystery of this wine and these vines – we have a wine that is so singularly evocative and implosive that it will find the soul we thought we might have misplaced. It is hard, believe me, to remain unmoved by it.
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It occupies that liminal space between waking and dreaming, between knowing and wondering – even between “understanding” and surrendering – such that you just give up at a certain point. You know the pieces and can sort of suss how they add up, but then the wine is in your mouth and you have no choices any more. You’re present for a beam of light whose origin you can’t see. And you come to reside, for a small moment, in a silence that is always there and that does not belong to you.
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I don’t think any of us has our own particular silence. I wouldn’t mind if a few of us would shut up from time to time, but I think that silence is simply out there, and is a little fussy about who it lets in, and when and how. For me it registers as a kind of desire for reverie and calm. I need to clear a space for some kinds of wines. This doesn’t pertain directly to how “good” they are; it’s more a question of aura. It’s when I know I need to be absorbed, that the wine is made to absorb us, that you don’t drink it casually while dinner is cooking or you’re talking with your friends. You make a quiet space for it. Then you can peer into this tiny little theater of loveliness, and wonder that it goes down and down and down, past where you even can follow.
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Marvel at the flavors, as I am now, but don’t get stuck there. That’s why I’m not listing them for you, not to mention I’ve done it before. Gifts like these are always unwrapping but never unwrapped.
2021 Riesling Ritsch GG ++
Thörnicher Ritsch on the back label.
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Ritsch is like Zeltlinger Schlossberg on a peyote jag. It takes the herbs and makes them crazy. I love that herbal side of Mosel wine; in another week I’ll taste the Lieserer Niederberg-Helden (from Schloss Lieser) which is another one in the family. I mean, Mosel Riesling has its catechism but I like when it wriggles free. And Ritsch, my friend, is a banshee of the liberated Mosel.
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In this case the “GG” idiom justifies itself with a free-range wildness that maintains a classical balance, poise, and harmony – in its own wacked out way. In ’21 is really wrestles with the emeralds. I’m channeling my inner Andrew Jefford! Really rolls around with the leaves and tears at the resins.
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It’s the last wine I’ll taste today, and I’m delighted at the lunatic energy and directness here. A happy wine, a little unhinged but good humored, exactly what was needed after the pealing depths of the “1896,” an amped up extrovert in full flourish.
2021 Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett ++
Full name Longuicher Herrenberg.
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Upslope from the Maximiner Herrenberg, with many ungrafted old vines “up to 100.” Often this is among the Mosel’s most platonically perfect Kabinetts.
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It is again, provided we bear in mind the singular nature of the ’21 vintage. This wine always shows its bracing snap, which is a splash of freshness in a warm year and which is a double-down on briskness in 2021. Its sweetness is subsumed into a minty manic energy, and the effect is like being whipped by an ice cold slice of lime. What makes it work, ultimately, is the old-vines density, imparting a palpable extract that swells the mid-palate and uses its furry richness to file down the sharper edges.
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The longer it sits in the glass the more improbable it becomes. It has its own perfection, in the context of the very high register its flavors play upon. If you cherish brilliance you will find my enthusiasms too qualified, too moderate. It’s a special kind of triumph, which amazes me but which I wouldn’t need to see very often.
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Still the wine is superb. And still, it engenders many thoughts about the ’21 vintage, some of which swim against the prevailing tide.
2021 Laurentiuslay Riesling Spätlese ++
Full name Leiwen Laurentiuslay.
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Small terraces, never underwent Flurbereinigung. For me, this is usually a Mosel Monument, and was the most undervalued great wine in (what was) my portfolio.
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Whatever the reason, the primordial earthy grip and depth of this wine overcomes the (sometimes) icicle-chill of ’21 to create one of the vintage masterpieces.
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The sponti aroma is welcome. The gob-filling mid-palate thickness is literally amazing in the face of the twitchy vintage energy. In the (upcoming) Selbach-Oster report you’ll see I draw a line between Johannes’ Uralte Reben and this wine, and it’s making perfect sense to me right now as I taste. It’s that ur they have in common, the sense of tasting Mosel at the moment of its birth.
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The extract-density is so powerful it renders moot the question of discrete sweetness, which in any case is swallowed up – and which makes me wonder, yet again, at the existence of the dry version of this vineyard when this one is so sublime and perfect. I started to write about length, but this gorgeous thing tastes like it never didn’t exist and would never cease to exist – so, length? From what to what??
2021 Ritsch Riesling Auslese ++
Full name Thörnich Ritsch, and the back-label refers to “quartzite”
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The alpha-omega identity is that of a GG on one hand and an Auslese on the other. When Loewens obtained a new parcel in this great site, Christopher teased me that he might be able to create the Kabinett I always wished for. But his mother shot him down promptly: “No Kabinett from Ritsch!” she declaimed categorically. Pity, for it would be a sensational wine, but then again I myself don’t own the vineyard.
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I do own some back-vintages of this wine – the 2012 is ridiculously great – and this one is at least as good in an entirely different way. It tastes like a mixture of clean late-vintage botrytis plus a degree of dessication and conceivably even a nip of frost, just enough to give an evocation of Eiswein. But it doesn’t “read” terribly sweet; it’s rather like one of those savory ice-creams you make in a Paco-jet – from lime and verbena in this case – and whatever your view is of the “Auslese experience,” this wine isn’t it.
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The palate has brilliance and depth, and the fragrances are peyote-vivid – you could drink it from a hose at Coachella. It is much too savory to be ghettoized as the “usual” Auslese.
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Words begin to fail me. Oh I can get the tangible parts of the wine; it’s the intangibles that have me reeling. How do you fathom this lightness with this substance, and how on earth do you fathom these flavors? How do you pick a way through this unlikely mélange of green herbs and red berries? Have you ever conjured the combo of anise-hyssop and Mt. Rainier cherries? Are you able to contemplate the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel with the salty depth of old-vines savor?
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This is perhaps the greatest Loewen wine I’ve yet tasted. And it’s early days yet for Christopher….
2020 Maximin Herrenberg Riesling Auslese +
Full name Longuich Maximin Herrenberg.
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<whew>….an amazing aroma. “Cherries and melons” doesn’t do justice to it.
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This is what you expect from the Auslese genre, but it’s no less beautiful for all that. It’s gossamer and lyric and redolent of every sweet-green thing you can envision, and while its sweetness is on display it is couched in a delicacy and wrapped in herbal lychee top notes such that it belongs in a tasting menu as the “pre-dessert” that freshens the palate before all the buttery chocolatey business arrives. A cool lime pudding, so refined and pretty you wonder if you even need more dessert. (Have pity on the poor pastry-chef…)
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The astonishing ’21 risks making this lovely wine feel plausible – but it isn’t. It’s simply more tangible though no less miraculous. That we recognize this miracle is hardly the fault of the wine. I know of very few ‘20s with this fine, pure botrytis.
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You know, it’s not often that a single estate excels across the gamut from the mineral gnarl of the dry wines to the utmost finesse and restraint among the sweet ones. An ovation is warranted here and now!