The wine that really I am the most excited about is the 2014 Martin Muellen Trarbacher Huhnerberg Riesling Auslese Trocken* for as little as $37.99 on a 3-pack. This is a hard wine to talk about. It's like an emotional experience tasting and smelling this wine for the first time. It's a true holy crap this is frigging unreal from the moment you engage with it. It i has the highest dry extract for a dry Riesling Martin has ever made and it is only 12.5% alcohol! Those numbers are like Oscar Robertson averaging a triple double. Just shake your head. But wine is not numbers you shake your head at, it's actually tangible! This wine moves into your palate with a short term lease. Takes over. You experience this wine. It also experiences you. You think this wine is over and it is really just beginning. It crushes your palate with the amount of sheer material. The mineral density is just remarkable. The intense and almost blinding structure of this wine has no peers amongst dry wines in Germany. The finish as I just said is the beginning of this wine. It is beyond. It just goes and develops more and more. It cannot be described as complex as complex things have to be stable. This changes infinitely every time you sniff and smell it. It has terrific spice, layers of ripe and juicy green apple and some peach fruits but they are so young now and need time to develop. It's more fruit pith and minerals galore now. It's also this vineyard. The Trarbacher Huhnerberg aka know as the chicken head or chicken neck vineyard as that is what it looks like, is a top vineyard in the Mosel. It is not directly over the Mosel, but kind of in a valley very near the Mosel. It is pictured here. It is the steepest vineyard I have ever been in and I have been going to steep German vineyards for over 10 years now. This is "scary I want to leave and get back to the car" steep. There's also intense live white electric wire to keep out the boars at the top. Scooby the dog got electrocuted and yelped for a minute. It doesn't seem like a vineyard. It seems like some sick challenge on Survivor: Traben-Trarbach edition. But it is slatey, stoney, very steep and Martin single handedly replanted it when there was just trees and bushes. It took years. It is not fun work. I could not imagine doing this work. But the work was done and this vineyard is one of the tops in the Mosel. It has its rightful place as a top vineyard as it was on the old Prussian tax maps. It creates enormously spicy, deep, ageworthy and complex wines. They have a distinctive unique character to them that is unlike any vineyard in the Mosel. If you liked the 95 and 98 Krover Paradies Auslese Trockens, hit the elevator door, go three levels up and you might be near these. The estate is just better than it was in 95 and 98. This will age remarkably well. I'd say if I were a betting man, my drinking window would be 2025-2065. This is a long distance runner and for my palate one of the finest dry Rieslings I have ever tasted.
What Is Dry Extract?
Dry extract is everything in the wine other than water and aocohol. It's the stuff that adds flavor. Martin proudly told me the 2014 Auslese Trocken has the most dry extract for a dry wine the estate has ever seen. That is ridiculous. And it's 12.5% alcohol. What? This can only happen in Germany and only at this estate.
Now to the old. I also swoon over Martin's off dry wines which are really dry tasting and the acid is so high that they would be called out as Trockens blind. They have remarkable depth and texture. The one that really is drinking well right now is the 2007 Krover Paradies Spatlese** 9.3 which can be had for as little as $27.99 a bottle on a 4-pack. The 9.3 represents the residual sugar in the wine. This is on the drier side of feinherb but has terrific qualities that make it a prime choice for drinking today. One of those absolutely beguiling slightly beginning to age Muellen noses. Spice, petrol, funk, lemon custard and loads of umami like aromas. Super intense and extracted palate. Wow. There is an enormous amount of material here. Just chewy, dense with amazingly clear and vivid fruit. Not that there is much of it as this is just one of the most hauntingly elegant expressions of slightly aged minerality in Mosel wine I have had in a while. Amazing long tapered finish. Perfect balance and juiciness. Just entering a very very long drinking window.
Among my favorite things to do is visit with Martin Muellen. He is the sweetest man and his wines are all so good. Dry, off dry, sweet and nobly sweet. He does it all and all so well. He has dramatically improved I think since I have been working with him. I loved his wines when I started but his increased ability as a winemaker and his vines getting older have contributed to make Martin Muellen one of the top estates in the Mosel at a minimum for dry and off dry wine. At a minimum. I know sweet wines are not en vogue right now but his sweeter Kabinett, Spatlese and Auslese bottlings are absolutely terrific as well. But today's email is about my last visit this past September. I always make it at 9 or 10 in the morning because that's the best time to taste. Plus, Martin's wines are complex, sometimes moody, and need time to unfold. Even if they have been open 3 weeks to a month. He is making Riesling in the most traditional way you could possibly imagine. Stefan Steinmetz, on my last visit to Germany, called him easily the most overlooked top flight winemaker in Germany (well - he was before the Wine Advocate anyways) and the States. He also said he is the gatekeeper of the old school traditional Mosel style of dry and off dry wines. He sometimes uses a basket press for some of his bottlings. Everything is aged in old wood foudres and the winemaking is very reductive, so the wines last forever open and even longer in the cellar. The acidity is remarkable. Gentle shockwaves I like to call it and his more serious whites have white burgundy like structure to them.
We always taste the current vintage and then he gives me a menu of what older stuff he has, which is running out as he has gotten immensely more popular now since Stephane Rheinhardt introduced him to the rest of the world by lauding him in the Wine Advocate.
2014 Martin Muellen Trarbacher Huhnerberg Riesling Auslese Trocken* - $39.99 ($113.97 3-pack) (LIMITED)
2007 Martin Muellen Krover Paradies Spatlese* "9.3" - $29.99
($111.96 4-pack) (VERY LIMITED)
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