When I made my initial trip to Germany to scout for producers for Fass Selections I relied on all my contacts in the wine business to point me in the right direction of who's making great and interesting wine. I went to visit my friend, Gernot Kollman at Immich-Batterieberg in Enkirch and he had Nico and Uwe of Caspari Kappel come and present their wines to us and Gernot also had a few cases of samples of a few producers that were friends of his and were up and coming. One of them was Joachim Clemens of Weingut Clemens in Wintrich. At that time all that was dropped off were inexpensive estate bottles of dry and off dry Rieslings. It was before the company opened and I was looking for more inexpensive wines as I was not sure what direction the company would go in. Since I was cutting out two middle men some wines were deemed very good but too cheap to sell in my model. The Clemens wines ware absolutely terrific but we never found a place for them at those price points. Anyway I still liked the wines and did debate on selling them.
Fast forward to my German trip this past September and I was at the Bernkastel Weinfest which is quite an event and I wound up siting at a table with Stefan Steinmetz, his mom and Joachim Clemens. We chatted for a bit and Stefan Steinmetz was raving about his wines as well. Saying they have improved greatly and I need to taste them again. He was very insistent. I was leaving the Mosel very early the next morning for the Nahe so I had Joachim ship the wines to me in my hotel in Freiburg as that is only hotel I was going to be in for 5 days straight and there would be enough time to receive them. The Germans I must say have wonderfully efficient shipping. I had this wine shipped and all my toiletries shipped as I forgot them at a hotel in Speyer. Both arranged easily over email. Anyway, I tasted at the hotel in Freiburg all of the samples he sent me and I was thrilled with the overall quality (fresh, lively and complex wines, but also was honing in on what the "Fass Selections"' wines would be. It was easy after tasting a few more times.
It was the two brilliant wines from the Grosser Hergott that were the Fassiest wines.. This vineyard is very steep and the vines average 45 years of age. The soil is a mixture of clay shale and oil shale according to Joachim. There is almost zero information online about this vineyard which I find as a major wine geek pretty fascinating.
The 2013 Weingut Clemens Wintricher Grosser Hergott Riesling Kabinett Trocken is a steal for the cellar at $23.99 on a 4-pack. This wine is like an electric eel on the palate. So crackling with acidity and minerality it seems almost alive. It is fully palate enveloping yet ripe and never too dominant. There is a serious core of power and concentration here with pithy peach and luscious green apple fruit and dazzling and penetrative minerality. A dark minerality. Not as cheerful as say your minerality in the Rheinhessen. But the wine has freshness and depth, and the greatness of this site is apparent. A wine of uncommon depth and potential. Really impressive and had the the sneakiest length on the finish. The texture of this site also is quite impressive. Oily and acidic at the same time. Which extended as it aerated more and more.
My note says this wine needs 3-5 years to really come into its own but man was it all there. There is nothing like it in my book. Caspari is brighter and Muellen is more compact but Clemens is all about the texture he gets from this impressive site.
The 2014 Weingut Clemens Wintricher Grosser Hergott Riesling Kabinett Feinherb for as little as $23.99 on a 4-pack is absolute aromatic rockstar. Kabinett Feinherb is where it's at in the Mosel in 2014 and this wine kills it. Truly a textbook example of Mosel Feinherb in all of its Aromatic Glory.
Combined with the textured amazingness of the Grosser Hergott and the juicy and sultry drinkability of the 14's, especially with a kiss of sugar thrown in them, this wine just slayed me from first sip. While you wait on the '13 this is the wine to drink. Just ridiculously great. Nose just soars with and airy complex panoply of exotic and refined fruit. A fruit basket almost. Terrifically light and complex and oozing with minerality, this dances on your palate. At this pradikat and with this amount of sugar this is definitely the strength of the vintage in the Mosel. This wine is exactly what the Mosel can do that no other wine region on Earth can replicate. A light, complex wine with a hint of sugar and just oozes with site specificity that will age 15+ years. For $24 a bottle it does not get better.
A friend and wine critic said to me once that there are more great overlooked and undiscovered vineyards in the Mosel than all of the vineyards in Burgundy. After tasting in Germany for a while now I'd have to agree. The Mosel is full of gems. It is almost overwhelming how many great vineyards there are yet how only a few are fetishized. The vineyards are classified in Germany, but not the way they are in Burgundy. And what I mean by that is price. Musigny is never cheap. Neither is Chambertin. But in the Mosel, the are many equivalent vineyards to say a Chambertin or a Musigny (for argument's sake let's call Egon Muller's Scharzhofberger Romanee-Conti) but they are all priced the same. At that $20-$60 price points in the Mosel there is every great vineyard imaginable with quality shifts as drastic as Savigny-Les-Beaune to Romanee St. Vivant. I don't think there is as intense a classification via price/vineyard as there is in Burgundy possibly because the 1971 classification (a sweeping wine law that basically made vineyards like Wehlener Sonnenuhr expand from 5 hectares to 80 hectares) mucked things up a bit and or it is so complex no one has taken the time to do it. But as a result of that, Mosel Riesling will always be the greatest value in the world of wine.
2013 Weingut Clemens Wintricher Grosser Hergott Kabinett Trocken - $25.99 ($95.96 4-pack)
2014 Weingut Clemens Wintricher Grosser Hergott Kabinett Feinherb - $25.99 (95.96 4-pack)
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