How lies the land at Müller-Catoir these days?
To clarify my biases, I am friendly to the domain. I imported them for many years. And to defend my biases, they formed because the wines are always good and often superb, and I have learned to expect it to continue. So whether that is a “bias” or just a reasonable expectation based on decades of empirical input … well, you tell me.
From the early ‘60s until 2002 the estate was based on a tandem, between the then-proprietor Heinrich Catoir and the cellarmaster (and legend) Hans-Günter Schwarz. If memory serves, the two met at wine university, formed and maintained a friendship, and the rest is history. I first learned of the domain—relatively obscure at the time except to insiders—from a book (by Hans Ambrosi) called Where The Great German Wines Grow. 98% of the estates named therein were the “usual suspects,” alongside of which was this out-of-the-way place in the Pfalz, which I was quickly driven to explore.
I met neither Mr. Schwarz nor Mr. Catoir on that first visit. In fact I met neither of them for several years, when I’d started assembling a portfolio and was pitiably desperate to include Müller-Catoir in it. From the first sample in the very first visit I knew something literally extraordinary was taking place here. As I grew more deeply familiar with the wines I had to surmount my reluctance to issue exclusive superlatives, because it was clear that the estate was in a class by itself. The “best in Germany?” I was willing to stick my neck out and say that.
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It was a golden era at the monastic-feeling estate up on its hill above Haardt, with the terraces behind it and a narrow road leading to the castle above. Not to mention the lemon tree in the courtyard, a proud citizen of the more clement Pfalz climate. In those days Mr. Catoir seemed averse to publicity or to “making the scene.” He had mixed feelings about having an American importer, and he never seemed pleased at the reviews and PR my advocacy engendered. Yet within these walls a revolution was taking place, thanks to the singular genius of Hans-Günter Schwarz, and the many apprentices he sent away galvanized, into an ad-hoc army of Schwarz acolytes, many of whom stand among the greatest names in German wine today.
It bears mentioning that the estate is a so-called “Meisterbetrieb,” a winery with official dispensation to take on apprentices, as Schwarz and Martin Franzen (who succeeded him) are certified Meisters. (Franzen’s students, many of whom I’ve spoken with, think the world of him and laud him to the skies for his teaching acumen.)
The current proprietor Phillip David Catoir is less retiring than his father was, and the estate is at least moderately more visible, or at least as visible as my friend’s introverted temperament will permit. (I speak as a fellow introvert, with affection for all of similar makeup.) The estate doesn’t seem to be “trendy” nor to care about being trendy. Theirs is a purity of purpose that still can feel monastic, and this is sometimes reflected in the wines. Especially the Rieslings.
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I refrain from issuing grand pronouncements based on the 2024 vintage, or indeed of the few that preceded it. But I’m glad to float hypotheses and suggest a few theories. One is, while I don’t find the estate “singular” any longer, I do find it exceptional, rarefied, and in the finest possible way, unusual.
How so? Well, if you’re included among the serious Riesling estates in Germany, you almost always want your Rieslings to make statements, to be impressive, to gesture toward tangible significance. But Martin Franzen has aims of his own.
He told me the coolness of his Rieslings was a result of his emphasis on structure and specifically on a harmony and purity of that structure, about which, he says, “If the structure is in place the fruit will follow.” He isn’t concerned with a bold flavor statement in his baby-Rieslings, but rather on a sideways sort of ultra-violet impact. He doesn’t chase “points” with his Rieslings yet he gets them anyway, such is the quality and purity of aroma in these ostensibly self-effacing wines.
Yet while I respect, honor and appreciate Franzen’s Rieslings, I begin to feel the best among the estate’s wines lie elsewhere.
It has been clear for some time that Müller-Catoir is the preeminent grower of Gelber Muskateller (dramatically) and Scheurebe. There’s no sensible disputing this. Neither are these trivial grape varieties. They were unfamiliar to Franzen when he became cellarmaster twenty three years ago, and he admits to being wary of forming a relationship to them equivalent to that of his predecessor’s, but Schwarz left the vineyards in impeccable condition, such that a competent vintner could make, at a minimum, interesting wines. That Franzen has surged ahead to making wines at an apex of profundity is an admirable achievement.
But other dramatic developments need our attention. One is the remarkable quality of the Spätburgunders, which threaten to stand alone for their sheer distinctiveness, even if they weren’t also aristocratic and delicious. It’s been at least three vintages now, and if I were a younger geezer I’d be looking to score a lifetime supply for my cellar, before tout le monde caught on to the scintillating beauty of these wines.
The second development is still hypothetical at this point, but if the 2024 Weissburgunders are a harbinger of things to come, we need to welcome a new elite producer of Pinot Blanc, and maybe make a place at the head of the table.
We can’t conclude without addressing the striking successes with Rieslaner. My only caveat is the emphasis on intensely concentrated (albeit electrifyingly brilliant) sweet wines. One taste of any of these masterpieces—and they are masterpieces—leads one to wonder what sort of wine Rieslaner might offer at less exalted levels of ripeness and sweetness. Perhaps this is impractical from a harvesting standpoint—yet still I wonder.
And so we survey the latest vintage from the least conspicuous among the most consequential of Germany’s greatest wineries.
We begin with reds. Lately I’ve found the reds to be sensational and original. So what now?
Müller-Catoir red wines
2023 Haardt Spätburgunder +++
The village wine, one of two; it doesn’t appear they produce an estate-level Spätburgunder any more.
The color is ideal (not too dense, lovely hue) and the fragrances are in line with the striking green elements (conifer, artichoke) I recall from early vintages, and which I utterly love for their emphatic imprint of originality.
The ’23 adds licorice and bold minerality to the aromas. The palate is smoky and leaves a gorgeously sweet lingering finish. I wonder a bit at that smokiness—it could be terroir and it could be cask, though I’d be surprised to see either new wood or small barrels for a wine of this echelon. It has the iron note of Sarawak black pepper.
It is a marvel, almost voluptuous from the Jancis glass, striking for a wine of such palpable outline and perceptible contour. As it sits in the glass(es) a warm Pinot Noir sweetness emerges. The texture just goes on melting. As do I.
Really, is there anyone outside of Burgundy making more singular and ravishing Pinot Noir than these? They’re so empathic and fascinating they could probably heal anxiety disorders.
Retasting, it has the articulation and the contours of certain 1er Cru Volnay (Champans?), yet what moves me most about this wine—other than its sheer deliciousness—is that it feels entirely without template or precedent. One can barely fathom how a wine with such length of Pinot sweetness can also be so ferrous and peppery and resinous.
Ziereisen’s Talrain has the iron but not the silkiness. Can a wine be assertively gentle? But there you go: paradox, the marker of greatness in wine.
2023 Mussbach Spätburgunder ++
The gravelly soils of this commune tend to give relatively plump mouth-filling wines, as has long been apparent with its Rieslings. The first aromas here are morels and beef stock bones. Earthier than the more refined Haardt—at least at first.
I’m a pepper geek, as you’ll have sussed, and this one’s more Madagascar than Sarawak. (Example; we use Sarawak for lamb and Madagascar for duck and chicken.)
But hoo ha! This wine really lands on the palate. It’s as sweetly earthy as you can imagine—as you could dream, actually—and from the Jancis glass there’s an appealingly rude element, almost but not quite animal, but also a declension of all the textbook gradations of classic PN. The initial fragrances do not prepare you for the palate impact at all. Think of porcini sauteed in duck fat with a late-summer truffle not far away….
It remains overtly lush, and has the grace to admit a little cherry flavor that bounces among the lavishness. But please understand: the lavishness is bound in a setting of cool-climate ambience, which makes it (even) more exquisite. Consider—where else can you be enveloped in sweet vinosity yet also see every speck of flavor as if through a microscope? And enjoy an endless finish in which all these elements (plus an inchoate minerality) play a sublime chord on your stunned palate.
But note, I say “stunned” but this isn’t the kind of wine that’s made to “stun” you. Most such wines are crude and palling. This wine will stun you with its rampant interplay, sheer deliciousness, and easy grace. How many other wines can say the same?
2023 Herzog Spätburgunder “1G” +
So, the 1er Cru, grown on sandstone, low (35hl/ha) yields.
The wine is more overt (and more wood-influenced) but barely (if at all) less compelling. Most tasters will grasp it more, as it speaks a certain language with which they’re familiar, a kind of generosity and assertiveness. I approve! I only observe that this beckoning charm comes at the cost of a certain force of improbability and ingenuity.
But this is superb and elegant Pinot Noir, silky and articulate and with the almost bizarre length all of them have shown. You’ll recognize the 5-spice, soy, and sandalwood we all cherish in fine PN, and if you’re like me you’ll marvel at how deftly and gracefully these are sung.
That’s the problem with being original; when you offer a wine with familiar parameters it can seem plausible in contrast. My love of vinous lone wolves is such that I can easily underrate a wine that tastes like something I know. I should probably outgrow this, but don’t hold your breath.
Meanwhile, this is a beautiful wine, and if it’s (relatively) more “conventional” it is also highly silken and graceful.
Returning to it after several days I do feel a little contrite. I mean, the wine is borderline-gorgeous. This is at least as important as the degree to which it is novel, and the only way it might be objectively a teeny bit less impressive is the greater length of finish shown by its predecessors. Still, that is an esoteric virtue, arguably more important to tasters than to drinkers. If the hedonic is your tonic you’ll be right at home here.
2023 Vogelsang GG ++
Sorry but I’m getting fed up with the GG affectations. You don’t know this is Spätburgunder until you turn the (too-heavy) bottle around, and then you have to read incredibly tiny print. Of course we are simply supposed to know, but help a guy out! “Oh, we’re too majestic to concern ourselves with such piffle as the person who looks at the bottle and tries to figure out WTF it is…”
Meanwhile, the terroir here is basically limestony (“shell-limestone”) and the site is unusually steep for these environs. It shows in the wine, which is the first among these that could easily be mistaken for Burgundy, at least aromatically. It offers all the “extra” overtly stony fragrances that supersede fruit etc. at least initially.
All hesitation—not that I had any—is immediately overcome with the magnificently convincing palate. This is simply outstanding, possibly great, dramatically pheremonal and gorgeously chewy.
It tastes like a super-fine dark chocolate, and with air it shows again the iron peppercorn I tasted in the first wine, and didn’t expect to find in this swashbuckling lass. The wine has a will of stone along with a generous heart. It is thoroughly impressive and more than merely delicious. It is close to great, and may be closer than I think.
It embodies the GG “type” by dint of its serious density and by placing front and center the non-fruit flavors—earth and carob in this case. It isn’t more “giving” than, say, the first wine, but its gifts are more luxurious.
Of all the accomplishments Martin Franzen has made in his 2-plus decades at Müller-Catoir, none impress me more than his deftness of touch and deep understanding of Pinot Noir. Nor have I tasted a flight of wines that gave me more and deeper pleasure than these four Pinots; not for a long time. I wondered as I tasted them again whether they might have faded in any way, or whether I may have been seduced for some reason when tasting them for the first time.
If anything they have improved. There are times when Pinot Noir’s complexity is bound within its sumptuousness, around which orbits a curious sort of ether. Those are the hypnotic ones, the spellbinding beauties we dream about for many years after. But here is a time when that abracadabra is spoken with the diction and form of a sonnet. And this is no less a miracle.
Müller-Catoir Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay
2024 Herzog Weissburgunder 1G ++
Context—there is an estate-WB and also a village WB below these three. They (correctly) sent me the more “important” wines. This one was important enough to receive a huge “score” from an experienced reviewer.
It has a fine aroma, purely varietal yet also focused and crisp. Ripe and tropical and gingery and salty, it’s both textbook Weissburgunder and also textbook Müller-Catoir. None of the scratchy angles of ’24 are here, and again the finish is remarkable both for its length and intricacy.
Many green scents (sorrel, verbena, lemon-balm) and many yellow ones (scallops, Asian pear, jasmine, osmanthus) all in a sharply etched flavor both in its outline and its interior. It’s both varietally “correct” yet it has the dancing buoyancy and unforced dialogue of flavors we taste in fine Riesling.
This is uncommonly superb Pinot Blanc! Is anything comparable being made anywhere in the world? The nearest cognate I can find is (maybe!) Hunter Valley Semillon. For the variety, this is truly otherworldly.
2024 Herrenletten Weissburgunder 1G +
Among my favorite vineyards, with an intimidatingly complex soil one could shrink down into “chalk,” and then observe (as I have) a flavor affinity with certain Champagnes.
Another huge “score” attends to this. Be that as it may, lift this to your nose and tell me you don’t smell Mesnil Chardonnay. If I sniffed it blind, my first guess would be Coteaux Champenois from a Mesnil grower. Then I’d taste it and be completely amazed and confused.
Chalk gives white flavors, obviously, but this wine, so snowy in its aromas, is entirely green on the palate. Think sorrel, cilantro, chervil, all leading to a grippy palate that’s almost stiff but leads into such a deliberate, explicative finish you aren’t sure quite what just hit you.
If it’s a little less bombastic than the Herzog, it is pulled more tautly and it places minerality closer to the front. It’s all lemon zest (less sharp than the juice) and starch.
I foolishly thought I could power through these Pinot Blancs, but nothing doing. This one barely leaves your feet attached to the earth, but these are grand mystic creatures, better than which I have yet to taste here, or anyplace else.
2024 Neustadt “V” Weissburgunder +
We’re back in wine-law land. “V” stands for Vogelsang, a GG for Spätburgunder (and for Riesling, as we’ll soon see) but not yet “approved” for its “status” for this variety. So I tasted it out of sequence, though its “score” was within a single “point” of its colleagues.
It’s more exotic, curvaceous, come-hither than its more “platonic” colleagues. Rampantly tropical and juicy, it remains firm—the estate says “pear, apple, honey, lime zest”—and if they can do that I can do this: “white spices and white flowers (especially freesia) in a moment of ecstatic dancing, in which a sort of abandon is cultivated and a night is danced away.”
It is a beautiful wine that’s somehow of-this-earth but is no less beautiful if maybe a little less ethereal now, less spiritually charged, more giddy. An excellent wine you can fathom. Your tasting notes will satisfy you. (You’d fumble around helplessly with the Herzog and never show those notes to anyone.)
Weissburgunder Brut SEKT
Five and a half years on the lees, so it’s based on the 2019 vintage. Year upon year the sparkling wines get better and better at this estate. This one smells like a Blanc de Blanc from the Montagne de Reims.
It’s fine, it works, it smells more like “PB” than the still wines I tasted, though I imagine the “lesser” wines might resemble this, minus tirage of course. It’s salty, mussel-y, a little peppery, obviously (after all that tirage) brioche-y, and very good. In a way it’s like sashimi in a glass. Amberjack perhaps.
The finish is properly bready and crunchy. The whole thing adds up. It rides on the wave of ever-improving sparkling wine from Germany, and it’s not far from the crest of that wave. It gains nuance in the glass but that’s hardly surprising.
The finish concentrates into a pleasing and compact juiciness. It is a complete success. I probably should have tasted it before the other PBs. Next time I will….
2024 Neustadt “V” Chardonnay
Okay, well hmmm. It comes from the Vogelsang—hence the “V”—which is a GG but only for Riesling and Spätburgunder, so this is officially a village wine. It’s also an outlier among the whites in that it sees … oak. “Delicate use of…” according to the winery, but among a range of pure steel wines it—is noteworthy.
So much so that the moment I tasted it I wanted to cook for it. A stock from dried cordyceps. A little saffron (to speak to the oak). Some fresh wild Sockeye.
As this “type” of wine goes, this one is civilized, albeit I find it a misfire in the context of the winery. (It also received a ludicrous “score” from, again, a prominent and responsible reviewer.) I won’t mind drinking it but I think they needn’t have made it. If they insist on making Chardonnay then get it as limestony as possible and give it months of lees contact and leave it out of wood, because while the use of wood is deft enough, it joins an international glom of tedious anodyne “beverages” that have little (or no) reason to propagate.
Müller-Catoir Rieslings
The Rieslings did not include the 1G Mandelgarten nor the GG Breumel. I wonder why not, especially as the Breumel is an icon of the estate. But eye on the prize; I’m delighted and privileged to receive samples at all.
2024 “M-C” Riesling
The basic estate-level Riesling always punches above its weight. Here’s a bit of power-of-suggestion; I was lamenting the absence of the “M-C” level Scheurebe among the samples, and as I was pouting about that I lifted this glass of Riesling, and guess what I smelled?
For many years a lot of Pfalz Riesling vineyards were planted with (Neustadt) clone-90, which gave a Scheu-like fragrance, so my little brain blip wouldn’t be so improbable, except that I’ve heard that as the clone-90 vines aged, the Scheu thing started to fade. Regardless of my ditherings, this wine smells rather on the exotic side of Riesling’s options.
The palate is very good and not surprising. Franzen’s Rieslings are high-register critters that can seem aloof in their youth, and add to that the texturally corrugated nature of ’24, plus the vintage’s green elements, and we have a wine of a certain rectitude. But this is as it should be, a crackly dry Riesling with kitten teeth, that smells wonderful and hisses along its way on your palate.
As it warms it grows more chummy and salty, also typical behavior for ’24 Rieslings at the “everyday” level. The Jancis glass exaggerates the asperity but the wee Spiegelau is Jim Dandy.
The wine got better and better over the days, piquant and winsome and with fruit to mitigate its initial strictness.
2024 Haardt Riesling
It bears mentioning that none of the Trocken wines I’ve tasted up to now have had the word “Trocken” on the main label. I guess we should assume it unless the label says otherwise.
This village level wine smells, again, lovely and appealing, with more “business” than the above, more stuff to ponder. Lots of aroma nuances I associate with “Muschelkalk” soils (i.e., fossil-bearing limestone), a certain sweet earthiness like salsify, a bit of tomato leaf, and something that’s not-quite-peach.
The palate is fine in the stony type, etched and chiseled and generous in its rather ultra-violet way. I appreciate these sorts of wines, I respect their fervid insistence in not being ingratiating, but the only way I can fathom the “score” it received was to assume it was tasted quite young while still showing its chubby-cheeks. In bottle (probably) a year now, it is a lovable but “challenging” toddler.
Again cellar-temp (around 55ºF [13°C]) is ideal, and give it some air to release its tertiary flavors, which are ample and both intriguing and agreeable. There’s even a peppery edge. Like the M-C, it got better as it located its fruit, and I enjoy its breezy introversion, albeit there’s a fine line between introversion and diffidence.
2024 Bürgergarten Riesling +
If there’s a charmeur among these Rieslings, this is it. Tangerine and orange blossom and Meyer lemon and ginger candies in the come-hither aromas. But it’s the palate where this wine shows its genius.
It is at once seriously beautiful and studiedly aloof. A self- contained gorgeous creature, it’s far from stuck up but it maintains a calm that feels allusive and doesn’t reveal all its cards. A high-register wine, a violin, not a cello. A little breathy. It won’t raise its voice in a loud room—it will simply stay quiet, or leave the room.
It’s a wine of moonlight but it isn’t frosty; it’s like those big yellow moons we sometimes see rising just above the horizon. And as you can tell, it’s much more interesting to engage with this enticing being than to list all the stuff it smells and tastes like—at least more than I’ve already done. Just think in. terms of song, of flowers, of fruits both sweet and citrusy, and of an incipient minerality that’s like the bone structure of a fine face.
It’s texturally juicy from both glasses, and has a surprising finish entailing elements we hadn’t yet experienced. It’s the kind of wine that, when you look up from the glass, you suddenly love everything around you.
And while the previous Rieslings loosened up over the days, this one tightened. Today I register its grip. It isn’t as moony. But as we know, single impressions are ephemeral, and perhaps a wine ends up being a Venn diagram of whatever ephemera overlapped. That, or it’s “all of the above, depending on the day.”
Tasting it a third time—and the final time, cuz I’ma gonna drink the rest this bottle, thank you very much—the wine is wonderfully slinky and serpentine, showing an angular deliciousness that only seems oblique. Its depths are serious, if a little demure from sip to sip.
2024 Herrenletten Riesling 1G
My favorite site, as I’ve told (and told, and told) you, oh, maybe a couple times now. But I suspect a barely discernible cork, the kind we hate. Something is muffling the brilliance we sense is there. So I poured from deeper in the bottle—sometimes it’s just the topmost wine that touched a “dubious” cork and the rest of the bottle is fine. (The lip was clean and the cork doesn’t smell of TCA.)
This may have done the trick. At the very least it lets 95% of the wine emerge. But we’re still not entirely healthy. Since TCA increases with air, I’ll taste it again in a couple days and then we’ll see. But I’m certain if I were tasting this with Martin, he’d furrow his brows and go grab a new bottle.
Oxygen will tell, always. The wine was subtly corked. And I am anything but subtly frustrated.
2024 Vogelsang GG ++
<sigh>….yes, it’s Riesling, in the weensiest possible print on the side of the main label. But the good news is, it has just 12.5% alc (compared to 13% for the village wines).
It has a very fine aroma—what I associate with a Grand Cru. Something elusive but tangible, visible but barely fathomable. We can all say whatever we want about those things. I’ve called them erogenous. Sunlight touches it and the vine says “Ooh…that’s nice…”
Many of us have followed the progress of this project, from obtaining the site, to renewing the vineyard, to establishing the official stature, to making wines for several years that said “See? We’re getting there.”
With this Riesling, we have arrived. It is the finest dry Riesling I have tasted in 48 years of acquaintance with this remarkable winery. And as with all such wines, it defies language.
I will describe it as swollen with elegance. A paradox, obviously. And never forget, most (all?) great wines show paradox, the improbable sense that *this* can’t possibly coexist with *that* so that a wine with such precise starched minerality, such upright stoniness, can ride along big foamy waves of structure. And yet, they do.
The shortest shorthand I can suggest is “forest floor” and maybe … maybe petrichor or in any case rainwater. This is what you taste below the stoniness. The remaining nuances—to the degree they can be isolated—matter much less. It’s the entirety of this wine that enacts the masterpiece.
Based on its behavior as I got deeper into the bottle (sipped twice, tasted three times) it wants to be left alone for a while. It was most obviously impressive when freshly opened. Then it folded its wings. Yet even the interior of the wine, the part that emerges when the fruit retreats, is convincing. But knowing what else is there is important.
What a joy to see how their patience was rewarded.
Riesling SEKT Brut +
Three years of tirage and from appearances disgorged in the past year, so likely to be a 2020 or 2021 (with the acidity to support that hypothesis). The aromas are prominently attractive, reflecting the huge leaps forward Germany has made with its sparkling wines. And none too soon.
Indeed this a many-layered, even complex aroma leading with pear and brioche, yielding to cucumber and high-altitude oolong and associated “sweet” herbs. Few Champagnes have fruit like this, but of course they have chalk and oyster-shell, absent here.
The palate is beautifully leesy, like vanilla and semolina and white corn and ginger. It has the precise correct tirage it ought to have had, and though it is younger than its brother (Pinot Blanc) Sekt, it’s an *even* better wine. The smaller Juhlin stem shows a remarkable panoply of spices (think 5-spice without the clove but with fenugreek). I was impressed with this wine last year and it’s jumped ahead now.
A sweet green lime emerges, and if you said “Matja” no one would shush you. The wine is both sophisticated and also has the melody and sprightliness of Riesling at its most extroverted. The finish is like a compound butter with slices of apricot.
With multiple sips the wine has been rather a shape-shifter, and at the very end (after four days) a smidge of reduction spoke up. Still, I think the forward progress of this wine is more than maintained.
Müller-Catoir sweet Rieslings
2024 Gimmeldingen Riesling Kabinett
From vineyards in Gimmeldingen other than the Erste Lage Mandelgarten. With 10% alc it’s not a “baby” Kabinett. They also say it grows on loess.
The fragrances are enticing and intricate. You’ll break your brain trying to nail them all. We can simplify it (for our mutual benefit) by citing stone fruits, lavender, satsuma or orange blossom, and rather to my surprise, butterscotch.
The wine is delicious and curious. It has the marked length of ’24 but the finish is sweet (while the wine itself isn’t especially RS-heavy for its category). The typical finishing density of ’24 shows here as a kind of caramel flow—not in terms of sugar but instead of texture. Even with a gentle lashing of tart berries the overall closing gesture is one of honey. And I repeat, this is not because the wine is so terribly sweet. It isn’t. It’s just the inherent structure of ’24 doing a paradoxical thing with this Kabinet.
Seriously, a taster who had the impression this wine was “crisp and spicy” would be just as correct as I am, albeit our basic impressions differed.
2024 Bürgergarten Riesling Spätlese
It’s an Erste Lage, as can be gleaned by the side of the label.
It’s a toastier, warmer smelling wine, with a little of the malt aroma that usually announces botrytis. Overall more savory than the Kabinett, even a little brioche-like, and certainly loads of lemon-balm and freesia.
This is affirmed by a markedly solid palate, with more of the botrytis notes coming out from the Jancis. And by the way, I don’t know whether there was botrytis or if so, how much, but there is something here that is aromatically a dead ringer for it. So I’ll assume my hypothesis is true until otherwise convinced.
I fuss about botrytis because it also shows a bit of volatility that often travels with it. The impression is less “sweet” than the Kabinett—the acidity is higher and botrytis (if that it be) is also more bitter than sweet, tasted in isolation. And yet the wine works in a pleasantly old fashioned way, as it might have in a ripe vintage from the 90s.
Solid, serious, sniffing at the backstream of Auslese but resolving into a drier finish than (most) Auslesen would show. It also finished drier than the Kabinett, which is actually drier. As a wine to drink, it isn’t on my short list, but as a Citizen of a culture, this has a lot to say
Müller-Catoir “aromatic” wines
Given that everything here is “aromatic” these wines are emphatically so. I am kind of sad the estate didn’t send the basic (“M-C”) qualities because I happen to find Scheurebe and Muskateller hard to resist, kinky beasts that they are, or can be.
Still, can’t complain about getting the top ones!
2024 Haardt Scheurebe +
The village wine of course.
There are three ways Scheu can go. Often it combines them; other times it emphasizes one of them. You have grapefruit (usually pink), cassis, and sage. The sweeter ones can show passion fruit also, especially when botrytis is present. Our guy here is all about the sage and cassis—at least at first. The Jancis glass also shows redcurrant.
The palate is spicy, angular, and excellent. It finishes long and salty. It has the crags and cheekbones of ’24, as well as the stubborn length. It is—interestingly—more elegant from the Jancis, which usually seeks to explicate each piece of a wine’s flavor. The finish is mintier from here.
From both glasses there’s a ferrous overtone, reminding me of Sarawak pepper. The wine’s on the zippy side, deliciously so for a Scheurebe lover and possibly blatantly so for the as-yet unconvinced. Yet wonderfully, it grew more and more raunchy each time I tasted it. Wine for a wild weekend.
Look, my private tasting note would probably be along lines of “hairy, a little rude, and with a savagery of nettle and other penetrating herbs. Plus let’s face it; you need sharp nails to really scratch this itch.”
2024 Mandelring Scheurebe 1G +
A more penetrating yet more refined cassis aroma. (One reviewer wrote “ripe melon and fresh basil” which is by no means false, but only serves to prove these associative impressions are often the caprice of the imagination in a frozen moment. Where he wrote “basil” I’m writing “lime leaf and tarragon.” All of us know exactly nothing and also precisely everything of what we’re talking about. Let’s say “The breath of a goat who’s worked his way through a hillside of nettles and gorse.”)
But the Mandelring site adds something of its own; a certain kind of toastiness. And from the Jancis, more than a hint of petrichor and minerality. The finish is like early sorrel from the young leaves. It’s tempting to say this wine is a Cru that happens to have been made from Scheu, but the grape’s too assertive. Yet it expresses its terroir rather than resisting or superseding it—which is part of my reason for believing these to be, if not “the best” Scheurebes, at least first among equals.
It’s not implausible to call this elegant in its basic psychedelic way. For a wine with two different colored eyes, this one dresses up real nice.
And I’ll risk trying your credulity when I say there’s an aspect of Scheurebe that has always reminded me of … manchego.
2024 Bürgergarten Muskateller +++
This can only be made when conditions are ideal, and is in effect the spirit-kin of the Goldert from Zind-Humbrecht.
Its initial aromas are nearly discreet for a Muscat. The palate shows the basil-leaf my esteemed colleague said he discerned in the Scheurebe. But it always shows that. What makes this the best Muscat in the world—and yes, I said that and will keep saying it—is a depth of texture and crystallinity I know from no other Muscat, and I am a panting hound for Muscat and taste it whenever I possibly can.
The wine is aerial, soaring, fabulously transparent yet amazingly creamy—extract, not “fat”—and it’s not only a tremendous achievement for the variety; it’s a simply masterly and stunning wine. Even the finish (especially the finish) has a complex and searching length that’s as compelling as many entire wines.
I expect to be impressed with these wines but this one has me stunned. I can’t recall such a combination of virtues. For Muscat, maybe not ever. I think it’s due to the teensy amount of RS—“Extra-Brut” if it were sparkling—but just a smidge more than the other whites, that confers a grace, a glow, I’m not sure you can find when you’re overly strict about dryness.
It is the summit, the Everest, of a lofty range of 2024 whites from here. Taste it if you still insist that Muscat can never be more than “pleasant enough if one likes that sort of thing.”
2024 Bürgergarten Muskateller Auslese
Well what have we here? It is rare for this grape to either shrivel, dehydrate or obtain botrytis—rare, but not impossible (see Bründlmayer) So:
The aromas, at first, are generically “exotic” and certainly beautiful, but not (yet) explicitly Muscat. Honestly, at first sniff I’d have guessed Rieslaner.
The palate is very rich, in the estate’s style of making “Auslese” in the manner of a “minor” Beerenauslese. These upgrades date back decades, to Hans-Günter Schwarz’s times, and have obviously been encouraged by the generations of proprietors.
It is a super-fine dessert-type wine that only alludes to its variety—at least in the eight minutes it’s been in my glass(es)—but delivers “the goods” for lovers of the type. My first impression, subject to revision, is this is less a quintessence of Muskateller than a kind of soughing of the variety into the larger genre of “exotic sweet wines.” This kept being my impression even after the bottle had been open for several days; it was less anonymous (varietally) but still not specifically Muskateller. It missed the diction and sensual logic of the (upcoming) Rieslaner.
This judgment says as much about me as it does about the wine. I don’t repudiate my impressions, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if nine other people tasted this and looked at me thinking Dude, just what is your problem??
My “problem” is there is much of a muchness about these types of wines. When I like them best is when they have taken the core of the variety or terroir (or both) and spun it into an incandescent thread, a ne plus ultra of the origin. But too often the origin gets lost within a glom of “rich sweet wine” which certainly has its sex appeal, but can also have a certain sameness.
To a large extent it can’t be helped. The grapes were there, and if you don’t pick them the boars and birds will eat them, so you may as well get them into the cellar and see what transpires. In this case you have a highly beautiful wine that also—to me—indicated a certain generic profile. I won’t object if you think me a curmudgeon.
2024 Herzog Rieslaner Auslese ++
Müller-Catoir Rieslaner should be a UNESCO heritage site for wine. Ever since the early to mid 1960s it has given dozens and dozens of spectacular wines, to which there is no equivalent that I am aware of.
My writer-self is flummoxed by this variety because it is truly and definitely more complex than my tiny mind can apprehend. You can read my feeble whacks at it both in earlier Catoir reports and also back in catalogues under the domain.
Rieslaner is also curious in that it keeps seemingly forever, but does not undergo metamorphosis as Riesling does. I drank a 2007 Auslese a few nights ago and apart from gaining color, it was much the same wine I tasted in 2008.
This is a staggeringly fine Auslese. It has all the structure and torque missing from the Muskateller. It has barely if any botrytis. It is resplendent and has a disciplined and contained mass you really won’t believe.
It’s essentially “Riesling-plus.” It’s Riesling on ibogaine. It’s “the Riesling Viagra” as I once wrote, engendering a fan-letter from Klaus-Peter Keller, who apprenticed many years ago at Catoir under Hans-Günter Schwarz, and learned to revere the Rieslaner. Martin Franzen has been as able a steward of the variety as anyone could ask for.
What a wine! And a BA is coming up….
2024 Herzog Rieslaner Beerenauslese +
The sense of sweetness isn’t markedly greater than the Auslese’s, but the texture is much more creamy and butterscotchy. If you relish an unctuous richness the body, detail and expansiveness of this wine will thrill you.
As you can tell, I preferred the contours and linearity of the Auslese, which was quite sweet enough but mitigated with a certain acid-driven crispness. I had both wines open and went back and forth tasting.
I respect, admire and applaud both this BA and Franzen’s deep understanding of how to make those wines drinkable, as opposed to arcane objects of “study.” It takes a consistently applied brilliance, and it has to resist the temptation to lapse into worship-of-richness as such.
I’ve simply become rather inured to the charms of the liqueurous. “It’s not him, it’s me.” He is a true master of the genre. This wine is no exception.
