Vineyard in My Glass by Asher Gerald

Author:Asher, Gerald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2011-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Site and year are the deciding factors, but the philosophy of each grower affects in some measure the style of his wine. Usually any difference in outlook or practice will have begun as a response to his particular vineyard. But there are also variations of response to broader questions. Some—for example, Peter Geiben, the much admired young owner-winemaker of the Karlsmühle estate, and Annegret Reh-Gartner, managing director of the Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt estate, both of them on the Ruwer—use stainless steel for the fermentation of their wines rather than wood. They say it preserves Riesling flavor, and there on the Ruwer, where the wines are traditionally more tender than on the Saar, they could be right.

It is more usual, though, for the leading estates to ferment their wines in wood, preferably in old thousand-liter oak casks. These are more labor intensive, but Peter Hoffmann says they help the wines clarify naturally, smooth the edges of their acidity, and generally support a faster development. “It was always traditional to use German oak casks in the Saar and Ruwer,” he says, “but their use is now more widespread than ever because of the demand for drier wines. For dry wines, fermentation and aging in wood are essential.”

Growers have varied attitudes to the whole question of trocken (dry) wines. They were first in vogue about ten years ago, one of the consequences of nouvelle cuisine but also in reaction to the overly sweet style of German wine that had become popular in the sixties and seventies. Bone-dry wines became the fashion in Germany, and many growers in the Saar and Ruwer, sensitive to the equilibrium of their wines, have regarded this trend as an aberration, a distortion of what their wines should be. But even Carl von Schubert makes two thirds of his wine trocken to meet demand. Others, including Egon Müller of the Müller-Scharzhof estate and Eberhard von Kunow of the Von Hövel estate, both on the Saar, rarely do so.

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