Weingut Merkelbach
2023
2021 Riesling Trocken
The color is a shade darker than that 2005 was last night! The fragrance is what it should be, with an Urzig angularity and a Kinheim apple-skin chew. (Can a fragrance have “chew?” Evidently so.) The palate could be called “sleek” if one approved of it, “thin” if one wasn’t sure, and “scrawny” if there isn’t enough fruit for our hypothetical “one.” There is marked length and linger for such a light wine, but the matter of fruit isn’t settled to my own satisfaction.
It’s a thirst quencher, but so are a lot of other white wines that have plenty of fruit, and this wine for its several positive attributes is just too ascetic. As you know, dry German Rieslings have improved dramatically in the last 15-20 years, but that doesn’t mean any old wine can succeed in this style.
That said, many ‘21s are in an in-between phase wherein they have shed their baby-fruit (very early) and haven’t replaced it with the tertiary flavors that usually follow seamlessly. I can’t be sure that this wine is stingy; it might just be mute at the moment. We’ll see how it fares over the days.
It is rather different the next day. For one thing, its residual sugar (below the legal limit of 9g/l obviously) is noticeable, and the wine is much less lean. Today I’d stop at “tart” and push “steely” away. It maintains the angular texture of a chaptalized wine (which it clearly is) but it’s far less forbidding now. One won’t write verses in its honor, but neither will one dismiss it out of hand. It was wise to have given it a day to get over the grumps.
2021 Kinheimer Rosenberg Riesling Spätlese Trocken
Again more yellow than I expected. It smells pretty. The wine was excellent in the 2020 vintage. And it a leap forward from the previous wine here. The texture is more elegant and integrated; the interplay of slate and fruit is visible and pleasing, and while the wine is hardly chummy it offers much vim and distinctiveness and many things to enjoy.
The gestalt is snappy, but within the outlines is a certain…not “richness” exactly, but a certain substance, and a certain rounding of the edges, so that this very dry wine displays a furtive kind of grace.
Rosenberg can show a musk-melon element sometimes, along with a smokiness as if you were burning herbs. This was dramatically present on day-2, and utterly invisible upon opening. It shows an intricate minerality from the Jancis glass. The deliberate finish is as much quince as apple. It has a basmati sort of starchiness, and it resolves into a lovely dry Riesling that some would call cerebral – and nothing the matter with that. The finish takes the mid palate and stretches it into the next county….
2021 Kinheimer Rosenberg Riesling Kabinett +
It smells like it should, this vineyard in this vintage with this ripeness. It’s on the dry side, as Merkelbach’s wines are (we’ll leave the outlier vintage 2018 out of this discussion….) and modest in the most positive way. What it is, is a charming little wine. It isn’t slight, but neither is it completed; it would need more middle and more visible ripeness.
As it is it slips down easily and forgettably. It isn’t overly acidic and it finishes balanced and dry after a somewhat misaligned beginning – common to many ‘21s that needed more sweetness to mitigate their acids but which would then have been too sweet. But this unassuming little wine knits together admirably over the palate, and it’s one of the ‘21s that can fool you; it grows in the glass and shows a swell of almost ferrous urgestein character – a kind of dark-slate – that really overtakes the external notes of the wine and leaves you in quite a different place from where you started.
The more I sip it the more it impresses me, and the more I have to surmount my own expectations. I assume this site will give lovely, even euphoric wines, but I don’t expect to see the brooding, expressionistic minerality I’m seeing here. My first impression was wrong, which is why any reviewer is a fool to “score” a wine based on a first-impression. I’m no stranger to foolishness, but that’s one I escaped from.
If I tasted it blind I’d think Saar more than Mosel. The tip off would be grapefruit and quince. I’d guess Wawerner Herrenberg, and then all my friends would laugh at me. I’d have to make all new friends, again.
This wine was fruitier on day-2, less insistently ferrous and “dark.” It shows wintergreen today, for reasons I struggle to explain.
2021 Uerziger Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett +
This is amazingly good and really entirely perfect. Each piece is where it should be, every element of balance and interplay is precise and easeful, and it is pure Würzgarten. If you were leading a seminar on Mosel Grand Crus you could – should! – use this as the very paradigm for this site.
It is also a great triumph for the ’21 Mosel vintage, a wine with none of the issues that plague the crop. Acidity, while brisk, is balanced. Sweetness is as good as invisible. Finish is maybe a little bracing, but within bounds. And the overall effect is seamless and complex.
It’s passionately introverted, and will shrink into itself if there are lots of clamorous wines around it. Could you see it accurately in a “big tasting?” I can’t fathom how. But put a little gray around it, and watch as its own gaudy colors shine through.
Yet as much as this is one of those “no need to say much” wines (as it explains itself so well), I have an image-tone. If you cook meat sous-vide you probably do a last-minute sear to caramelize the surface, and if you think of that – the melting purity of the interior with the snappy crunch of the exterior – you’ll understand something of the physical tactile life of a wine like this one.
2021 Kinheimer Rosenberg Riesling Spätlese
This shows the color I thought I’d find, which is to say, no color.
It smells great, pure Rosenberg, pure Merkelbach. The palate, with its 7.5% alc, arrives less sweet than that would suggest, but does the opposite of many German Rieslings – it finishes sweeter than it began. This is by no means objectionable, but the wine is rather creamier than the ’21 norm. Still, who says they all have to be angular?
But again, like all of these, it shape-shifts in the glass and grows less “pretty” and more serious. I really mean this: If you actually pay attention to these wines you will find your initial impressions are almost always inaccurate. This is a much better wine than it first appeared to be, and while it is overtly “rich” in the ’21 context it is also possessed of a certain sternness – if you wait for that to emerge.
And now, having broken it down and considered its facets and tonalities, the conclusion I can’t resist is simple: The wine is perfect. Not that other wines couldn’t be better; thousands of them can be. Not that you or I couldn’t imagine how this wine might be even better, because I’ll bet we could. But why would we want to? Really, why! This is exactly the way this wine should be, and if we think we need to demand even more, well….maybe we’re missing the point?
2021 Uerziger Würzgarten Riesling Spätlese ++
Having tasted these wines through and through in every vintage since 1983, I know a certain moment when I sniff it: ˆ.
God knows it didn’t appear in every vintage. There were a few dogs over the years. But when it did appear you knew all was right with the world. Like now, like here.
All you can say it this is ˆ Würzgarten. It is all here. Each of its many flavors, expressed with perfect articulation; each of the facets of truly classic Spätlese, expressed with perfect balance; all of the buoyancy and yet all of the paradoxical grip, that’s all here too.
I played a role in making Merkalbach “famous,” and these days they’re a stop on most reviewers’ tours. It’s a little sad to see the wines get “scores” but that’s the way of the world. These wines are and have always been different from the usual competitive matrix. They are das ding an sich, primordial, they refer to a self-ness so deep it renders the business of “evaluating” them seem like the conceits of dullards and knaves.
How is this wine? Just speak its name, slowly. That’s how it is.
2022 Uerziger Würzgarten Riesling Spätlese +
A similar overture to that of the ’22 Kabinett, but this time the doubtful notes are sloughed off more promptly.
I find this an “important” wine. It’s almost adamantly exotic, sternly herbal, none too sweet. And forget about “spices;” this is like a Ricola herb garden with the resinous echos of twenty five different herbs – most prominently hyssop, anise, basil, bee balm, herb salts, savory….
In its way it’s a masterpiece of terroir, a superb wine in any vintage, and a deep joy to encounter.
I think the Merkalbachs would have made three or four different wines from this material. You’d have the strawberry-fruity one, the kiwi-sassafrass one, the stiffly slatey one, and a couple other this-and-that wines you could blend together if you wanted to. The most distinctive wines would have been bottled alone, which I encouraged. I may be wrong but my guess is, Selbachs are simply too busy during harvest to baby these little lots along – or they combine them later, before bottling. Johannes, I hope, will rebuke me, because I’m a naïve dreamer and he’ll restore the Urglück and the Lang Pichter just as soon as there’s a harvest that’s clement and easy.
It would make me happy, but I’m too greedy for that happiness, considering the gifts I have already been given.
If you are somebody who holds these wines in special affection, then I hold you in special affection, because there aren’t very many of us, and that in turn is because we have learned how to ask for the sweetest things wine can give us. I promise you this: any day in which you think about Rolf and Alfred Merkelbach with gratefulness is a day you are shielded from dismay or despair.
It’s a pleasure to be reminded of these things, but in some ways it’s an even greater (if disquieting) pleasure to remember how easy it is to be wrong about a wine. This isn’t self-evident, because anyone in the reviewing business has to be confident that her judgments are correct and reliable. Usually they are. But speed is her enemy, and tasting too fast can lead to over-confidence. I shudder to think I might have published notes based on the first pour of any of these wines. Yet obviously, if everyone tasted as slowly and repeatedly as I do, the whole machinery of wine criticism would grind to a halt. That may be a circle that cannot be squared, in which case I can only remind you of the benefits of being wrong about a wine. Each time one of them leads you in an unpredictable direction, you are granted a rare and precious opportunity.
I often look at people walking their dogs, and wince to see them yanking the dog around and away from the many things he finds fascinating. And I am greatly heartened when I see someone letting the dog lead the way and move at his own pace, pausing when he wants to pause, reading the news of his world. We’d all do well to taste wine that way (and I’d love to watch reviewers stop every few meters to pee on a pertinent shrub), though the world won’t let us. More’s the pity.
2025
2024 Riesling Trocken +
Appealing fragrances – these are my first ‘24s from Germany, in fact. In common with most of the Austrians this has a palpable mid-palate, which lingers charmingly and mitigates a modest cut of acidity.
The wine is cool, silvery and slaty. It likes the juicier profile from the little Spiegelau, whereas the Jancis is relatively severe. The balance is fine, and the wine is most classy, and immediately better than any of their ‘23s.
Non-German drinkers may pause at a small textural astringency; I notice it but it doesn’t bother me, given the rich extract-saturated middle. There is even complexity here. It’s the best vintage of this estate-riesling-dry since Selbach took it over. And it held steady over two times tasting and two times sipping. Yeah, I know; I couldn’t help myself.
I am impressed.
2024 Kinheimer Rosenberg Riesling Spätlese Trocken
The aromas are smokier and more earnest, and at least at first, correspondingly less fun. But then a minute or so later the fragrance brightens.
The palate shows a certain turbulence typical for a young wine’s sulfur phase/funk. I won’t be surprised if my second note (two days later) is less tentative. But freshly opened, the wine is brooding.
As it sits in the glass – about eight minutes now – it continues to brood but the funk has faded. It shows a sober sort of minerality. It isn’t solemn but I’m struck by its opaque calm. If it were a person you’d ask “What are you thinking?”
The typical Mosel malics run to quince, all the way to its tart finish. It shares a density in the middle and an articulation of slate, and while it’s impressive in certain facets, it may be a bit too somber for its own good. But we’ll see; ask me in 48 hours….
Okay, it’s 48 hours later and I ought to be extremely happy. I just came home from a big long walk in the Arnold Arboretum on a supernally perfect Autumn day and my endorphins are screaming. Alas, the wine is still clunky. It repeats its initial behavior by improving (a little) with air, but this wine – right now – is neither pleasurable nor interesting.
2024 Kinheimer Rosenberg Riesling Kabinett
This most closely resembles the “old” style Merkelbach, so pure as to be diffident, telling you something you didn’t know you needed to know. Wine, it turns out, can simply live its particular life without having to parade its virtues “for your consideration.”
The palate, though, is somewhat urgent, because it’s struggling to find a détente among its elements. The sweetness feels both ample and tart; the acidity feels detached. I’ve seen this before with RS wines in their first 6-9 months in bottle, which usually tastes seamless as cask samples. I’m by no means anti-sulfur, but it can play a wine false at first. Are we rich and juicy, or are we in a tangle of strife?
I’ll hazard a guess – and only a guess – that this was well into Spätlese ripeness and the RS sought to balance the wine and not the Kabinett “type.” It rides heavy, yet in tandem with the other structural elements it also seems tart. Compared with the seamless precision of the Würzgarten Kabinett (coming up) it feels rustic. I perceive it struggling to emerge from its doldrums, and I think that it might, but that entails more faith than the wine gives me.
I apologize in advance if this drives the Selbachs mad, but I blended the two Kinheimers as close to 50-50 as I could, and created a really excellent feinherb Spätlese, which would have solved the “problems” of each wine alone. This of course is unthinkable, my ministrations notwithstanding. No matter how pure we seek to be, we finally have a product that has to be sold, and “Trocken” and (even) “Kabinett” are saleable concepts, whereas my absurd “Spätlese feinherb” would gather dust.
Sadly though, it is by far the better among the wines, and one where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I am left to my futile, wistful dreams of what might have been.
2024 Uerziger Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett +
This on the other hand works perfectly. I can’t tell you “how” and I’m not going to look at the lab analysis in search of clues. This wine, simply, is seamless, impeccable, singing with perfect pitch.
’24 is behaving most curiously, based (of course) on these wines alone. It shows the acid cut of ’23 but what leads to that is markedly richer. You wouldn’t call the wines “sinewy.” The wines appear to be rich and juicy and to cling to the mid palate appealingly; they finish beautifully in terms of flavor but raspingly in terms of texture. (I recall similar “issues” with many of the 2015s.)
Meanwhile this is Würzgarten through and through, this time with a cassis note I’ve rarely tasted. It puts the Würz in Würzgarten, especially with flavors of ginger and lemon grass and yuzu.
2024 Uerziger Würzgarten Riesling Spätlese +++
High hopes for this are more than realized….
Sorry if you’re a recent reader, but I’ve been tasting these wines since 1985 and selling them since the year after, and all I can tell you is this stands with the most perfect vintages of U.W. Spät I can recall. It’s a close cousin to the superb 2007 and embodies every single thing that makes these wines precious.
It tastes – reeks – of its terroir.
It’s perfectly balanced.
It has the lucid repose of the best Merkelbachs; it just sits there, shining.
It embodies one of my most beloved things; the ability to be both sweet and not sweet simultaneously.
It tastes like it was dropped from the heavens precisely in this form, never perturbed by human hands.
Now and again we receive a blessing we didn’t order or summon or otherwise ask for, and when it comes we generally don’t feel worthy. For me those are the best kinds. Not because they tell me I am worthy. I persist in my doubts on that score. But instead they tell me that blessings don’t seem to care whether we’re worthy. They come because they just do. Because they proceed according to an inscrutable genius that only seems random.
So: this blessing. To reject it would be churlish. I was worthy or I wasn’t; it doesn’t seem to pertain. I only know I will swallow it again and again, and so should we all.
2024 Uerziger Würzgarten Riesling Auslese Urglück +
This is the cadaster from which a particular sort of wine emerges. (There was another, called Lang Pichter, from which we obtained the occasional bottling, but Urglück is steeper and firmer.)
This is a classic Merkelbach Auslese, i.e., not very sweet and with little discernible botrytis. After a relatively rich entry, it seizes up wonderfully and actually grows edgy and tense. What with all the candy-floss (that’s cotton-candy to my American readers) wines under the “Auslese” rubric, a wine like this could cause consternation. “Damn it, I wanted something more buxom!” Sorry Chucky; this wine stretches tentacles into a past we thought was irretrievable, when Auslese was a wine you could drink instead of something you’d preen over according to how many “points” it received.
After all, if you’re lucky enough to score some true fraises de bois you will notice the acidity that underlies their concentrated essence. Sometimes they aren’t even sweet.
Open two days, it starts to show a slim angle of clean botrytis, maybe 10-15% of the whole. I like it, and it confirms the Auslese designation, and the wine is fine and stylish and still modest and pure. And still, none too sweet.