Every Sip is An Evening: The Stunningly Distinctive, Gorgeous, Signature Wine from Paul Weltner - One Of Germany's Top Wines

There are great winemakers whose wines are great because they are wonderful and what you expect

from their region.  And there are great winemakers whose wines are great but also shock you and make you say, "Holy crap, this is amazing, what is this?"  Paul Weltner's wines are in this second group.  Many of you have had Weltner's village wines from me and have been blown away by their distinctive character.  Well, strap in your seat belts.  I was too late to offer the 2011 Sylvaner Grosses Gewachs but begged an allocation of the 2012's from Paul.  This is his signature wine.  It is what he is all about.  Heck, one could say that this is what Franken Sylvaner is all about.
If you like white wine, do NOT miss this wine.

The 2012 Paul Weltner Hoheleite - Kuchenmeister Sylvaner GG can be had for as little as $47.99 on a four-pack.  This wine is a wine where every sip is an evening; you almost want to retain every mouthful all night to enjoy it to its fullest and not waste any.  It is similar to wines made by the great winemakers of France and Germany in that every possible sense is hit at the same time by waves of flavor.  Fruity opulence.  Minerality.  Salinity.  Savoriness.  Acidity.  Aromatics.  All at once.  And yet the balance is such that there are no jagged edges.  It is one of the most complex, dense GG's I have had, regardless of grape. Reminds me of Tim Frohlich's dry Rieslings. It has the structure to age for at least 10 years, and older Sylvaner can be awesome from Weltner. I have had the '05 and '06 of this wine and both were gorgeous with distinctive and vivid aromatics and a wonderfully resolved, opulent, balanced palate. Harmony at its finest. First of all, to find a white wine of this quality for under $50 is astonishing. This is an $80 dollar bottle easy. It has that breeding.  This is limited as most GG's are made in small lots similar to Grand Cru Burgundy. This wine is bottled in Bocksbeutel which takes up the room of 1.5 bottles in a standard shipper.

The second wine is the 2013 Rodelseer Kuchenmeister Riesling Trocken for as little as $25.99 on the 4-pack. First off is this is the wine I ordered the most of for myself during our first ship. It, for me, is the ultimate, geeky Riesling fest in a bottle.  Although Paul is known for his sublime Sylvaners inside of Germany, the people in the know say the Rieslings are the big secret/surprise here. There is fruit in this wine, but that comes out after a heavy decant or a day or two open. This is a wine about freshness, minerality and acidity perfectly executed. It has fierce acidity, which I love, and dense packed minerals in between all that intense acidity. But it is so fresh, so juicy, just so alive, it captures your imagination. It is so long on the palate as to not be believed.  It is perfect with food, just corked. This comes in .750 ml bottles and NOT the traditional Bocksbeutel.

Like many Fass Selections, these wines always drink better after a huge decant or a day or two open. There is just so much material that they need that time. The style is opulence, massive minerality, while being profoundly finesse-driven. These are emotional wines and dig more into the soul of the Iphofen/Rodelsee area more than any winery I have tasted from the area. The two wines today are very special and Paul's wines, at all levels, are worth your attention. The quality at every level is compelling and much higher than say a typical bottle from the region.

These wines will only become harder to get with the recent hiring of Stephan Reinhardt to do the German reviews for The Wine Advocate. Stephan is noted for being on top of the German wine scene, in a sense that he is in tune with what Germans drink, which is dry white and dry red. Christian Schiller, a renowned German wine blogger, writes about it here.

This winter I finally visited Paul for the first time in Rodelsee and got to taste with him. He is very detail oriented and precise and was a huge stickler for quality. It shows in his wines. They are almost perfect.   I have always loved Franken wines but my exposure was limited to one very famous winery that dominated the export scene. Since they were the only game in town, they were what I thought the top Franken could achieve as a region, Oh my how ignorant I was.

It was Summer 2010 and I was on a very quick jaunt through Germany and was in Burgstadt, which is around an hour and half away from Rodelsee, where Paul Weltner resides. I was having dinner with my good friend, Sebastien Fuerst, who is arguably the best producer of Pinot Noir in Germany, and he also makes brilliant, acidic and deep whites, and he whipped out a strange bocksbeutel for the apertif wine. It was a bottle of a Paul Weltner Rodelseer Schwainleite Schuerebe Trocken. I have always loved Schuerebe but was shying away form the sweet stuff at that point so was really excited to see the trocken designation. In Franconia trocken means trocken. By law it has to be less than 4 grams per liter of residual sugar. This was maybe 2 grams if I recall correctly. The wine moved me. It was an emotional experience as besides some Muller-Catoir's from the early 90's I had never had a Schuerebe, dry or sweet that was this precise, this clean, this pure, this etched. It was incredible wine. I naturally asked if this was exported as this was amazing wine and I had to have it. I was a retailer at this point, so if a wine was not exported I was screwed. It was not. I was screwed. But the idea was planted in my head, that I could one day be an importer, because I HAD to have that wine A friend at the time just opened an import/distribution company locally and asked me for any German leads. I showed him a picture of this Weltner wine and said track him down, he is the real deal. I said I'd buy a ton if you got it. It never went through. He did not contact him and as luck would have it, I became an importer in 2013, and Paul Weltner was my first e-mail. I could not meet him at the time I was going to be in Germany, so he sent a bunch of bottles to Sebastien Fuerst, and when I got to Sebastien's they were all lined up there ready for me to taste. I can say, without hyperbole, this was one of the most thrilling tastings of a new winery ever. Wine after wine was just revelatory. How could wines from Franconia be as good as the greatest dry whites in Germany? Each wine exhibited an opulence, precision, site character and depth that I had never tasted before, plus, most importantly, they were distinctive wines. I wanted them for my cellar as much as for my clients. He is a cornerstone of my big 3 German dry Triumverate (Weltner, Laible & Battenfeld Spanier) and perhaps my favorite as it was the estate that spawned Fass Selections.

These will ship in the late Fall/early winter.

2013 Paul Weltner Rodelseer Kuchenmeister Riesling Trocken - $27.99 

($103.96 4-pack)

2012 Paul Weltner Hoheleite - Kuchenmeister Sylvaner 

Grosses Gewachs - $49.99 ($191.96 4-pack) (LIMITED)