Here's a delicious wine for heavy weather – with a number of stories to tell.
First story: Weingut Weegmüller is the oldest winery in the Pfalz – some claim to fame in this region thick with the ancient three Bs, Bassermann Jordan, von Buhl and Bürklin-Wolf. With 300 years of winemaking behind it, the estate is run today by winemaker Stefanie Weegmüller, her sister Gabriele, and Stefanie's husband Richard Scherr who is in charge of the 15 hectares of vines in prime spots around Haardt. They practice what they call ecological viticulture and yields are low – as you can tell when you taste the wines. For more information and lots of photographs, see www.weegmueller-weine.de
Second story: While good old Terry Theise (see www.skurnikwines.com) has been importing these wines into the US for some time now so that the fruitier styles are widely distributed there, Weegmüller wines are being imported into the UK for the first time to my knowledge by Novum, a new company of which you may not have heard but which has an interesting history. (I just wish its name were a bit more memorable – there are too many of these Novums and Vinums about for an old brain to cope with.) Brits may remember my unusually savage article RIP Oddbins in which I lamented the departure from that popular retail chain of their talented head buyer Steve Daniel. He has resurfaced as wine buyer for Novum, a company designed mainly to challenge the remarkably few wine companies dedicated to supplying the London restaurant trade by offering hand-picked wines to add a bit more variety to the wine lists we all study so carefully once we've order our food, looking for a bargain.
This particular wine has that wonderfully pure, slap-in-the-face refreshment of ripe Riesling with fantastic concentration and balance on the palate. If anything it smells more advanced than one would expect of a 2002, which makes it an attractive change from all the callow 2003s there are around at the moment. And my one slight criticism of it is that it finishes a little suddenly. But although it is dry, it is by no means lacking flesh and fruit. This is a Riesling for Chardonnay-lovers (creep, creep). The fruit was grown on sandy and picked in the middle of October. Statisticians and German wine lovers may like to know that the Oechsle reading was 89, total acidity 8.3, residual sugar 7.9 g/l and alcohol level 11/5 per cent, (Yes, they really do lap up this sort of stuff – in fact there is a certain sort of wine buyer in Germany who will not buy a wine without this sort of background information.)
It costs £8.99 (inc VAT) a bottle from Novum who have a wholesale licence so you have to buy at least 12 bottles at a time, but they can be mixed. The company has lots of interesting stuff, including Donabaum's underpriced wines from Wachau, Clos du Serres from the Languedoc, Bodegas Estefania from Bierzo, Perez Cruz from Chile, Cascina Ca'Rossa and Varaldo from Piemonte, and Due Palme and Rubino from Puglia (Novum grew out of part of the old Cerelli & Tondo list. I apologise for nominating two dry Rieslings from the Pfalz in four weeks, but not much. This is the northern hemisphere season for them.
Weegmüller can be contacted directly on +49 63 21 8 37 72 or [email protected]
