Personalities

Egon Muller: Great Riesling will always be limited
«Magnum» №6-7(19) June-July 2007

The tasting of eighty wines from the renowned German winemaking estate Egon Muller — Scharzhof was the key seasonal event.

Eleonora Scholes was lucky to take part in it. Her luck was double because Egon Muller found time to talk to our observer, to share impressions on the tasting which was still in progress and to discuss the estate’s latest news.

– This is not the first representative Egon Muller — Scharzhof tasting, but it is probably the largest.

– Not probably. It is the largest tasting I’ve ever done. It’s bigger than anything my father has ever done and I don’t think I will do anything similar in my lifetime.

– So the experience is unique also for you.

– For me, too, it’s very-very interesting. Some of the wines I have tasted many times. When I get them here in the context of different vintages, side by side, I discover things that I’ve never known about them. Some of the wines I haven’t tasted in a very long time. One or two I can’t remember. So it’s a big experience even for me.

– How did you get the courage to organize an event like this?

– Karl Wolf (owner of the Austrian wine company WeinArt and organizer of high-profile tastings — E.S.) has asked me to do it and I said yes. He sent me a tentative schedule, like, a first flight with five spatlese from different vintages, second flight with five auslese and so on. I started putting vintages into this scheme and while I was seeing about wines, I slightly changed the tentative concept. For example, for one of the flights we’d have spatlese and auslese but produced from similar grapes. Most of the choice was really gut feeling and no hard research.

– Some flights were memorable because they produced more effect than expected. It was especially true for the lesser vintages. It is good that you didn’t limit the wines to great vintages and gave an opportunity to compare a wide range.

– It would have been very easy to show trockenbeerenauslese, beerenauslese, eiswein, auslese — the kind of wines that collectors expect. But what I wanted to do was to put much more focus on kabinett. It is the wine where vineyards really speak without any influences. Somehow I think that collectors are overlooking kabinetts which is a pity. On the other hand, we are getting more restaurant sommeliers and chefs to try and put kabinetts on their wine lists and often they find that they are quite successful. In England, for example, five years ago my importer told me that German wines are not sold in restaurants. Period. Now it has been completely changed. I think there’s some work that has to be done for German wine. For many people quality German wines are associated with high pradikat — spatlese, auslese, etc. But in our case and for some of my colleagues kabinett and other dry wines go a little bit unnoticed. However, there is a lot of pleasure to be discovered there, too.

– It was also instructive to look at wines from Wiltinger Braune Kupp vineyard. Usually it is overshadowed by Scharzhofberg, but the wines performed brilliantly at the tasting. What is the vineyard’s potential?

– You could probably say that Scharzhofberg is Grand Cru and Wiltinger Brauner Krupp is Premier Cru. It’s a very-very old vineyard, but its quality comes more from the fruit than from the soil. You don’t get this slate taste as often as you get in Scharzhofberg. In the decade of the nineties 1996, 1995 and 1994 are very good vintages, but we cannot touch Scharzhofberg wines because they are so closed. In Wiltinger Braune Kupp are slightly more advanced on maturity, and you can already see what’s in them. Wiltinger is always a little bit more forward than Scharzhofberger wine.

– Another important observation was that the wine’s character is formed not only by weather conditions of the year, but also by botrytis.

– That was the point of the flight with Scharzhofberger Kabinett from 2006, 2000, 1999, 1976 and 1964. They are all classical botrytis vintages where every wine has botrytis. Probably you would find 60-80% of botrytis grapes in the spatlese, and event in the kabinett you will have something like 30 to 50 percent of botrytis grapes. I like to think that when you careful about selection of botrytis, then it can only add to the complexity of the wine. Botrytis is not always 100 percent pure and good and clean so you have to watch out that you discard the unwanted grapes.

– How much botrytis can there be in ice wines?

– It depends. In 1995 the wine had very little botrytis because that was a very early harvest in the beginning of November. And 1992 definitely has hundred percent botrytis grapes. The others are somewhere in between.

– The tasting made it possible to assess wines in a flight and then check their compatibility with food. It is one of the most effective formats that I have experienced.

– That is something I must admit I did not think about when I was putting the tasting together. I knew that there was going to be something to eat, but I didn’t know that we would be having one course per flight. It is a very good experience. The food was very thoughtfully prepared to match the wines, no clashing. It was very supple and delicate.

– On the other hand, one of the most fascinating and successful was the combination of old Wiltinger Braune Kupp Auslese Goldkapsel with beef.

– It was fantastic. When I saw it on paper I thought, “Oh god, it is not going to work”. At the table I was sitting next to Paula Bosch (a leading German sommelier, from Tantris restaurant — E.S.). She said, “I am not missing the red wine, even though I would have served it without question”. You start realizing that when wines have a little bit of age, they are not so sweet anymore. And because they are so complex, they can adapt to what you have in food.

– Was the feedback of guests — journalists, importers, wine experts and lovers — predictable or did they say something new?

– Difficult question because we are past two tastings out of three. Some of the comments have been very predictable. I guess the most controversial flight was the Scharzhofberger Eiswein 1996, 1995, 1993, 1992 и 1989. Most people have asked about that. Before I would have expected to get much more comment about kabinett.

– Let’s move on to the Egon Muller news and those of Egon Muller — Scharzhof. Exactly two years ago you spoke about a new project Kanta in Australia — it has materialized into wine.

– Indeed, 2005 was the first release of our Riesling in Australia. We have been in some rough water because we lost one of our initial partners. When I entered this project I thought my role would be to make the wine which is a professional challenge. I cannot sell it, I am not a salesperson. So I had to find somebody capable of doing that. Now everything is back on track.

In Australia we are still buying grapes and we are leasing capacity of the winery. Our joint venture agreement was drafted for five years. Two and a half years are over, and in two and a half year’s time we will have to evaluate our situation. If we say that there is no point in selling Australian wine or Australian Riesling to the world, maybe we will sell the brand. It’s not a lot of money for us. It’s not that we had to build a cellar and plant the vineyards.

– What is the initial reaction on various markets?

– Variable. Predictably, in Germany we have a very hard time. In Germany you don’t find any Australian Riesling whatsoever. We had a very good reaction in Australia, probably most of that was curiosity from Australian winemakers. Some countries have been very responsive. England has a lot of Australian Rieslings already, so it’s very easy to enter that market.

– You have already done three vintages in Australia. How do you describe the experience?

– Winemaking approach in Australia is completely opposite to what you would call the traditional European approach. Speaking in very general terms, you could probably say that Europeans work in the vineyards that they have had for hundreds of years, and everything had been in place for a long-long time. You have a notion of terroir and you cannot change anything. The wine is made by the vineyard and that’s it. In Australia the winemaker comes up with an idea, he makes a wine according to this idea. That’s very fascinating — to work to a different concept.

– Did you also have to adapt to this approach?

– To a certain extent yes, but I didn’t set out to make a certain type of wine. I wanted to see what would happen if we treat this wine in a way like we are used to treat our wines. We did a little bit of skin contact which is very rare for Australian Riesling. We did wild yeast fermentation. We did not at any point prior to fermentation protect the wines from oxidation. So these little changes have already resulted in a wine which is not like any other Australian Riesling. If you taste it blind, you would probably not say immediately that this is the wine from the New World. I think it is still New World, it has a distinctive character for me. For the Australians, they always see the Old World character. The truth is in-between.

– How do you control production of grapes in Australia? Is it different to that in Europe?

– Not so much. We are buying grapes from Shaw + Smith. They have a vineyard that is about 10 years old, right outside the winery and planted to Geisenheim clones. The only thing that they do that we don’t do is irrigation.

– This brings up the question of changing climatic conditions in Europe. How is Riesling coping with warmer weather?

– Let’s say that every year you are working between ‘bottom’ and ‘ceiling’, the bottom being the point where grapes ripen and the ceiling being the point when the grapes become overripe. In the past we have always struggled to reach the bottom. And now, for the first time in our history we are starting to see the ceiling. For the time being it’s paradise for us as we get ripe grapes almost every year. On the other hand, we have vintages like 2003 which show us that there are maybe conditions when you get too much of a good thing. Still, I love 2003. If it happens every so often, I am quite ok with it, but if one day we find ourselves only with vintages like 2003 then probably we will have to think about changing either the locations of our vineyards or using other grape varieties. But I think in our area we are on very safe side because we have been focusing on the southern slopes. We can still go to west- or east-facing plots or slightly higher up. They have the same slate soils, terroir, steepness, but slightly cooler.

– There is also a new phenomenon. Now you make more TBA and less kabinett wine. Does it cause problems?

– Yes and no. The TBA 2005 harvest was unprecedented — we never had so much. For the first time we have sold TBA outside of the auction. I came away from this thinking that if we have more TBA it would probably give us a possibility to create some kind of market which is not there yet. People simply don’t know that this kind of wine exists. And if we can give it to importers, to wholesalers and have these people going around, showing them and saying, ‘Look, we have this very peculiar wine’, we can create a market. So the fact that we might have more TBA is not something that concerns me.

– If you want to create a market, there must be a few like-minded people.

– Yes, somebody has to help me. I am not a salesperson. But to sell something you need quantity behind it.

– What about other wine producers? Do they share your idea?

– I have the feeling that many of my colleagues think that the sweet wines are very difficult to sell...

– Some merchants say that thanks to a recent increased demand for dry wines in Germany export markets get higher quotes for sweet wines.

– I would not agree hundred percent. The possibility of making Riesling is very limited. Only ten years ago the vineyard area for Riesling in Germany was much bigger than nowadays. We can produce all different types. There are people who prefer drier wines — it’s their choice. There are people who prefer sweet wines and I am happy. But on a whole there is not enough Riesling and there will never be enough. Great Riesling will always be very limited.