Rules, more rules, and the future's even drier
Some wine collectors have been so horrified by the prices of the most sought-after 2005 red bordeaux that for the first time they are thinking of investing in 2005 German wines.
I feel equivocal about this. It's great that top quality German wine is being taken seriously by an increasing number of people around the world but not so great if prices reach a sensible level and all those lovely bargains disappear. As it is, the value of total German wine exports rose by 9 per cent last year - a reflection of the long overdue shrinking of the market for sugarwater at the bottom end.
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But most importantly I feel honour-bound to pass on the second half of my impressions of the 2005 vintage, which are not quite as enthusiastic as my report a couple of months ago on the generally fruitier wines of the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer and Nahe.
Last week's intensive tasting in Wiesbaden's Kurhaus of 225 top quality wines, as recognised by the VDP association of leading German wine estates, mainly from more southerly wine regions, was much more varied. Almost all of these "great growths" or Grosses Gew?chs wines are dry, in line with current German thinking that dry wines are inherently superior to sweet ones. And at $45 a bottle and up in the US (invisible in the UK), these wines are considerably more expensive than most sweeter German wines.
Compared with the majority of long-standing German wine enthusiasts in the UK and US, I am enthusiastic about dry Rieslings from Germany, especially the warmer parts of Germany. But although German vintners have become more skilled at making dry wines with every vintage, I cannot put recommend dry 2005s as unreservedly as the traditional fruitier styles made in more northerly wine regions, especially Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, in this vintage.
The 56 Pfalz Rieslings designated Grosses Gew?chs shown in Wiesbaden were worryingly inconsistent, for example. This may well reflect the notoriously patchy patterns of rainfall in the Pfalz region in 2005 but it did nothing to strengthen my confidence in the Grosses Gew?chs designation.
About 150 sites have been officially deemed "premiers crus" or Erste Lagen, capable of making a great growth, or Grosses Gew?chs. These are all owned or part-owned by VDP members, conveniently enough.
The estates submit wines from these top vineyards that conform to the Grosses Gew?chs rules: permitted grape variety, yield below 50hl/ha, Sp?tlese ripeness level but vinified dry. A panel, different for each region, then tastes them to see whether they are up to scratch.
The failure rate in the Rheingau at least, where for complex bureaucratic reasons Grosses Gew?chs are called Erstes Gew?chs for the moment, is apparently 30 per cent, which I found encouraging.
In the Pfalz the tasters were possibly less fastidious, at least in 2005. I had heard that parts of the Pfalz had been plagued by autumn rain affecting the health of the grapes and that in other parts the grapes failed to ripen properly due to drought.
Whatever the reasons, this for me was the most disappointing group of 2005 Grosses Gew?chs, with only Bassermann-Jordan, von Buhl and Biffar making wines with real clarity of expression. (The other Pfalz B, Burklin Wolf, has chosen to go its own, biodynamic way.) I gave no Pfalz wine a top mark.
The northern, classic heartland of the neighbouring Rheinhessen region around Nierstein was, similarly, far from the brightest star in this showing. Perhaps the most thrilling flight of all was that featuring wines grown on two southern Rheinhessen sites, Kirchspiel and Morstein. Until a few years ago they were hardly known outside their own area but they have been put definitively on the map by the twin young talents of Philipp Wittmann and Klaus-Peter Keller.
The Rheingau, home to some of the most famous, most well-heeled classic estates, was also inconsistent but I was impressed by a number of producers and not necessarily the historically most respected names here either (see list).
As has been evident for many years, the Nahe is home to a reassuringly competitive winemaking ethos with many wines displaying great confidence and skill in crafting this drier, fuller-bodied style of Riesling.
Traditionally the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany's northernmost wine region, has been associated much more readily with delicate, low-alcohol wines with some residual sweet fruitiness rather than with the more austere, dry style demanded by the letter of the Grosses Gew?chs law. That said, I was extremely impressed by half of the relatively few dry Mosels shown (just eight compared with 39 from the Rheingau, for example). This much higher strike rate than most regions perhaps illustrates just how successful the Mosel was in 2005, as I described in detail two months ago.
But the region that thrilled me most of all in this top quality dry white idiom was Franken, way to the east of most German wine regions and distinguished by its squat, green flagon-like wine bottles. In all, 16 Franken Rieslings and 16 Franken Silvaners had qualified as Grosses Gew?chs and very lovely many of them were too, with really convincing racy, super-clean fruit, a nice lick of earthiness and great balance. It is a shame so few of these wines manage to escape Germany and find their way on to wine lists abroad, for they make great wines to drink with food.
The Franken producer that shone head and shoulders above the others for the vibrancy of its wines was Juliusspital. I discovered by accident that this was one of very, very few in this selection of 107 elite estates to use screwcaps rather than corks. No coincidence, surely.
The red and white Pinots of which Germany is so proud, Sp?tburgunders, Weissburgunders and Grauburgunders, from a wide range of generally southern wine regions, were not quite as exciting as I had been hoping. German red wine is unrecognisably better than it was 20 years ago but the majority are probably of more interest within Germany than abroad where we can choose from such a wide variety of well-made Pinots Noir, Blanc and Gris/Grigio.
One thing worries me. Not all but very many of my favourite wines, the ones that seemed best balanced, had a perceptible level of residual sugar in them. They were off dry rather than sweet, and often no sweeter than many a New World Chardonnay. But I am not sure such wines would qualify under the recently tightened Grosses Gew?chs rules, which decree that from the 2006 vintage wines may have no more than 9gm/litre residual sugar.
In 2005 each region could choose its own limits for sweetness, which were as high as 18g/l in Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, 13 in Rheingau and 12 in Nahe. German wine without rules is of course unthinkable but these seem awfully inflexible to me.
For full tasting notes and scores on more than 400 German 2005s, see
www.jancisrobinson.comMore columns at
www.ft.com/robinson 给德国葡萄酒打分
最
受欢迎的2005年波尔多红葡萄酒价格之高，让一些葡萄酒收藏家惊骇不已，为此，他们平生第一次开始考虑投资2005年的德国葡萄酒。
顶级德国葡萄酒受关注
我对此则感到没有把握。全球越来越多的人开始重视顶级品质的德国葡萄酒，这当然是件好事，但如果价格达到可观水平、所有那些可爱的廉价货都消失了的话，可就没那么好了。事实上，德国去年葡萄酒出口总额增长了9%――反映出姗姗来迟的低端甜酒市场的萎缩。
不过，最重要的是，我感到，为了信誉，我有必要说一下自己对2005葡萄酒的另一半印象。和两个月前我对果味更浓郁的魔泽尔-萨尔-鲁维(Mosel-Saar-Ruwer)和纳埃(Nahe)葡萄酒的报道相比，这一半印象没有那么乐观。
品尝225种顶级德国葡萄酒
上周在威斯巴登“疗养之家”(Kurhaus)对225种顶级品质葡萄酒的集中品尝，正如VDP协会所承认的那样，差异很大。VDP协会由德国主要的葡萄酒庄组成，成员大多来自靠南的葡萄酒产区。所有这些“优质产区”(即Grosses Gewachs)的葡萄酒几乎都是干葡萄酒，这符合目前德国人的观点，即干葡萄酒天生就比甜酒好。这些葡萄酒在美国一瓶的售价要45美元以上（在英国看不到），显然比其它大多数德国甜葡萄酒要昂贵得多。
与英国和美国大多数长期痴迷于德国葡萄酒的爱好者相比，我爱好的是德国雷司令(Rieslings)干葡萄酒，尤其是德国较温暖地区产的这种酒。不过，尽管德国葡萄酒商在酿制各个年份的干葡萄酒时技艺都更为娴熟，我还是不能推荐2005年的干葡萄酒，毫不客气，就像不推荐靠北的葡萄酒产区酿造的那种果味更浓的传统类型一样，尤其是这个年份的魔泽尔-萨尔-鲁维葡萄酒。
例如，在威斯巴登展出的标明Grosses Gewachs的56普法兹(Pfalz)雷司令味道不稳定，这令人颇为担忧。它也许反映了众所周知的2005年普法兹地区雨水不调，但这丝毫不能增强我对Grosses Gewachs的信心。
大约有150个地方被正式认定为“一级葡萄园”（即Erste Lagen），能够成为“优质产区”。这些地方都由VDP成员拥有或部分拥有，非常方便。
酒庄酿制的葡萄酒来自这些符合Grosses Gewachs规定的顶级葡萄园：获准的葡萄品种、产量低于5000公升/公顷、具有晚采酒的成熟水平但要酿造干葡萄酒。然后，一个专家小组（每个地区都不一样）对这些酒进行品尝，看看它们是否达标。
至少在莱因高(Rheingau)地区的失败率显然在30%，这点让我觉得很是鼓舞人心。在莱因高地区，由于复杂的官僚原因，Grosses Gewachs目前被叫做Erstes Gewachs。
失望与惊喜
在普法兹，品酒人也许不那么挑剔，至少在2005年是这样。我曾听说，普法兹的部分地区秋雨成灾，影响了葡萄的品质，而其它地区则由于干旱，葡萄没有完全成熟。
不管原因是什么，对我来说，这是2005年度Grosses Gewachs中最让人失望的一组，只有Bassermann-Jordan、von Buhl和Biffar这三个酒庄酿造出了真正口感清晰的葡萄酒。（另一个普法兹B类酒庄Burklin Wolf则选择了用自己的生物动力学方式。）我认为普法兹葡萄酒不够顶级。
同样，毗邻的莱因黑森(Rheinhessen)北部经典的中心区在这次赏酒会上也远远不是最亮的明星。这个地区在尼尔斯泰恩(Nierstein)村庄附近。也许，最惊人的飞跃是莱因黑森南部两个地方产的葡萄酒，Kirchspiel和Morstein。就在几年以前，它们在自己的产区以外还寂寂无闻，但现在，两位并驾齐驱的年轻天才菲利普?威特曼(Philipp Wittmann)和克劳斯-彼得?凯勒(Klaus-Peter Keller)，已经明确把它们标在了地图上。
莱因高有一些最著名、最富有的经典产区，这里产出的葡萄酒味道也不稳定。但许多的产酒商给我留下了深刻印象，他们同样也不一定是历史上最德高望重的人物（详见名单）。
就像多年来明显体现出的那样，纳埃地区是竞争性酿酒风气的故乡，多款美酒展示着对酿造这种更干冽、更醇厚风格的雷司令酒的强大自信和技巧。
从传统上而言，位于德国最北部的葡萄酒产区魔泽尔更容易与带有清甜果香余味、酒精浓度低、口味柔和的葡萄酒联系起来，而非Grosses Gewachs所必需的更生硬更干冽的风格。就像前文中提到的，品酒会上展示的魔泽尔干白葡萄酒相对较少（例如，与来自莱因高地区的39种相比，这种酒仅展出了8种），其中一半给我留下了极为深刻的印象。与多数地区相比，如此高的命中率可能表明，魔泽尔地区在2005年是多么的成功。
然而在最上乘的高品质干白葡萄酒产地中，最让我吃惊的是法兰肯(Franken)。该地区位于德国多数葡萄酒产区以东，因其低矮的绿色大肚酒瓶而与众不同。总共有16种法兰肯雷司令和16种法兰肯西万尼(Silvaner)符合Grosses Gewachs标准，其中许多都非常可爱，都是用真正口感纯净、原汁原味的水果酿造，带有宜人的泥土芳香，味道十分均衡。这种酒很少走出德国，进入国外的酒单，这的确是一件憾事，因为它们和食物一同享用味道非常棒。
葡萄酒名声远远超过他人的法兰肯产酒商是Juliusspital。我偶然发现，在107个杰出产地中，使用螺丝帽而非软木塞的少之又少，而Juliusspital就是其中之一。这绝对并非偶然。
德国人引以为傲的红白皮诺(Pinot)，包括Spatburgunders、Weissburgunders和Grauburgunders，产区基本上位于南部，它们的味道没有我期望中的那么令人兴奋。不经意间，德国红葡萄酒已经比20年前好了，但绝大多数德国厂商可能对国内市场比对国外更感兴趣。在国外，我们可以在种类繁多的黑皮诺(Pinots Noir)、Blanc和Gris/Grigio等佳酿中选择。
有一点让我担心。在我钟爱的那些口感似乎非常均衡的葡萄酒中，虽然不是所有，但是也有很多都存在可以感觉到的糖分残留。它们是干葡萄酒，而非甜酒，甜度不比许多New World Chardonnay高。然而，Grosses Gewachs标准最近变得更严格了，它规定，从2006年起，酿造葡萄酒的糖分残留量不得超过每升9克。我不确定这种酒能否符合要求。
2005年，每个葡萄酒产区都可选择自己的糖分标准，魔泽尔-萨尔-鲁维最高为每升18克，莱因高为13克，纳埃为12克。当然，没有规则的德国葡萄酒是不可想象的，但在我看来，这些规则实在是太僵化了。
欲了解2005年德国400多种葡萄酒的品尝记录和评分，请参看
www.jancisrobinson.com
