terry theise estate selections Imported by: Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc. 575 Underhill Boulevard, Suite 216 Syosset, NY 11791 516 677 9300 Fax 516 677 9301 www.skurnikwines.com e-mail [email protected] WHAT IS LEFT TO SAY The self steps out of the circle; it stops wanting to be the farmer, the wife and the child. It stops trying to please by learning everyone’s dialect; it finds it can live, after all, in a world of strangers. It sends itself fewer flowers; it stops preserving its tears in amber. How splendidly arrogant it was when it believed the gold-filled tomb of language awaited its raids! Now it frequents the junkyards, knowing all words are secondhand. It has not chosen its poverty, this new frugality. It did not want to fall out of love With itself. Young, it celebrated itself and richly sang itself, seeing only itself in the mirror of the world. It cannot return. It assumes its place in a universe of stars that do not see it. Even the dead no longer need it to be at peace. Its function is to applaud. -Lisel Mueller i i i FOR SPARKY v A ck n o w l e d g e m e n t Liz DiCesare didn’t ask to be the guarantor of my peace of mind, but she’s become exactly that, by dint of her remark- able caring and talent. She’s a fascinating person and a superb professional, and I am absurdly fortunate to work with her. v i The Theise Manifesto Beauty is more important than impact. H a r m o ny is more important than intensity. The whole of any wine must always be more than the sum of its parts. D i s t i n c t i n c t iveness is more important than conventional pretti- n e s s . Soul is more important than any t h i n g , and soul is expressed as a trinity of fa m i ly, soil and artisanality. v i i contents What Is Left To Say . .iii Dedication . .v Acknowledgement . .vi Theise Manifesto . .vii Let Us Write Your Order For You . .x Introduction . .1 Portfolio Principles . .6 A New Way to Measure Sweetness . .8 Dry German Wines . .9 Wine Approach . .10 2000 Vintage . .12 Earlier Vintages Revisited . .14 Notes On Groupings . .16 How German Wines Age . .17 Label Basics . .18 Glossary . .19 SOMMELIER ALERT! . .22 NAHE . .26 Dönnhoff . .28 Helmut Mathern . .32 Gänz . .35 Kruger-Rumpf . .36 Crusius . .38 Jakob Schneider . .40 RHEINHESSEN . .42 Take Me To Your Liter . .43 J.u.H.A. Strub . .44 Brüder Dr. Becker . .47 Günter Wittmann . .49 Merz . .52 P.A. Ohler’sches . .54 Christian-Wilhelm Bernhard . .56 Gernot Gysler . .58 MITTELRHEIN . .60 Tasting Versus Drinking . .61 v i i i Toni Jost . .62 Florian Weingart . .64 PFALZ . .66 Müller-Catoir . .68 Koehler-Ruprecht . .74 H & R Lingenfelder . .77 Kurt Darting . .80 Neckerauer . .82 Herbert Messmer . .84 Josef Biffar . .87 Eugen Müller . .90 Theo Minges . .92 RHEINGAU . .94 Josef Leitz . .96 Spreitzer (NEW) . .100 Claus Odernheimer / Abteihof St. Nicholas . .102 Jakob Riedel . .104 MOSEL-SAAR-RUWER . .106 Mosel Regionals . .108 Selbach-Öster . .110 Freiherr von Schleinitz . .115 Erich Jakoby-Mathy . .117 Meulenhof/ Erben Justen Ehlen . .118 Alfred Merkelbach . .121 Joh. Jos. Christoffel . .124 Heribert Kerpen . .127 Willi Schaefer . .129 Willi Haag . .132 Reuscher-Haart . .134 Hoffmann-Simon (NEW) . .136 Carl Loewen . .138 Carl Schmitt-Wagner . .140 Karlsmühle . .142 Van Volxem (NEW) . .144 FRANKEN . .145 Ernst Gebhardt . .145 Schloss Sommerhausen . .145 i x LET US WRITE YOUR ORDER FOR YOU! It’s easy! We write the order, you take the wine, we cash the check. What’s not to like? In all seriousness, I have spent the past several years actually writing about 15% of all the D.I. orders I receive, so I thought I’d formalize it. This is for people who want the wines but don’t have the time to hack through my Amazonian jungle of quivering prose. Here’s what you do: • Give me a budget, and/or the number of cases you wish to receive. • Tell me how to proportion the order; Rhines vs. Mosels, what proportions at which price points, how much Kabinett vs. Spätlese vs. Auslese, etc. • Tell me if you want any Liter wines for floor-stack, any sparkling wines, in fact tell me generally if you want a conservative order or a high-wire order filled with lots of weirdo wines. • Tell me if there are wineries which have done well for you in the past, or which have not. And away I go. I will create an order proposal for you, you’ll look it over and tweak and twiddle it, and send it back in the form that you wish.. I promise this: knowing that you’ve bought on trust from me, I will make DAMN sure that every wine I send to you is KILLER WINE. I can’t risk your being anything less than really impressed with every cork you pull. The last thing I want is for you to think I fobbed something off on you. I will write the HIPPEST possible order within your guidelines. We call this the E-Z method of flash-buying. It works. If you’d like my help, I’m standing by to give it. If not, I shall pout, and taunt you for the pitiable order you wrote yourself. Who needs that kind of trouble? THE DEADLINE FOR ORDERING FOR FALL 2001 DELIVERY IS JULY 11, 2001 x or romantic. He chose it (if it was indeed what we should No martians ate my cables this year, and nobody’s call a “choice”) because it needed to be done and it pleased putz got stuck, though my wife did happen to spot anoth- him to do it. er truck from that unfortunately named cleaning service. When wines come from such people they glow with “It really does exist”, she cried. “Of course it does,” I the value of human care and enterprise. These vintners replied. “Did you think I make this stuff up?” “Well, don’t seek to reinvent Wine. It is enough that the beauty of knowing you . .” she began, stopped by as dour a glare wine renews, always, that every year threads its way into as a poody-cat like I can muster. a great story. It nourishes us to take such wines into our The most interesting thing to happen last year was bodies, because by doing so we are connected to the delib- that I wept in front of eleven of my customers and tried erate rhythms of the world, and to our human not to let them see it. We were tasting at Schmitt-Wagner, place in it. and Bruno Schmitt had raided his comprehensive cellar of These ideas have started to become my schtick; old vintages. He does it every time I visit, and I can never they’ve crystallized out of my experience over the years get over the honor he shows me. Though I also suspect he into something that looks like—ulp—a contribution I gets a big ol’ kick out of it himself; the wines come out like might make. Thus I write and talk about them. If you actu- baseballs at a batting cage and he’s always announcing the ally read this catalog (you have my sympathies) you might vintage before you have a chance to guess it, he’s so eager imagine I think about these things a lot, but the truth is I and revved up. hardly think of them at all. I do if I have to, and I have to This time he now. In my daily life I think mostly about baseball, sex brought out a treasure and guitar solos. So, when I all-of-a-sudden am blindsided remarkable even by his by an incandescent example of everything I think is impor- s t a n d a rds, an Auslese tant about wine, it wipes me out. And thus, I sat weeping f rom the great 1 9 3 7 in front of eleven of my customers and tried not to let them vintage. I had tasted see. the wine once before Things are happnin’ big-time with my compadres at (this is a generous man) casa Skurnik. We have all kinds of young, juicy people. and I waited for what I Sorry as we were to see Mark Hutchens leave us (he’s back knew would come. As pursuing his first love, music), we’re realigning ourselves the wine was poure d to accommodate the intellectual-sensual juggernaut that is the group inhaled audi- Mr. KEVIN PIKE. Kevin will contribute all kinds of feral bly at the color, and I animal prose a few pages from here. Then there’s a Mr. saw many faces grow meditative as they sniffed those first ANTHONY AUSTIN “Tony” as he is fondly known (and mysterious fragrances. But as always seems to happen, hates to be called) who is the only person I have ever seen when you expect to be moved you’re too self-conscious who can spit wine while technically unconscious and still and you sort of can’t be moved. That was me. My guests hit the spit-bucket. I’d have hired him for this skill alone, had walked through that little tear in the curtain out into but happily he’d done yeoman’s time on der street und the other world. I was happy for them.