News

The Ürziger Underground
Issue 1

by Mark Huebner, January 2002

"If this van is rockin’, we’re drinkin’ trocken."

German wine has more than its fair share of mythology to overcome in the market place. 
It seems every other country has been successful in raising the image of their particular products except Germany.  Ask anyone what their first California wine was and they’ll invariably wince and embarrassingly admit to a short lived affair with some factory grade grape-based insecticide in a three liter bottle, normally in the freshman year of college or the during a year of bagging groceries at Piggly Wiggly (whichever came first.)  Almost anyone who survived those early years of California wine addiction will still endorse the marvels of that modern day wine Mecca with slack-jawed awe, naming a dozen Cabernets ranking 99.6 points in the most recent Wine & Glamour magazine or ramble on and on about the new 600 top Sonoma Chardonnays that all go with kiwi-rubbed salmon poached in mink oil.

Who didn’t “experiment” in their formative years with the darkly seductive Lambrusco? Obviously the natural progression for the naively inquisitive who started out on colas before moving on to the harder stuff.  Then finally the whicker-basketed Chianti whose consumption lead directly to a collection of multi-colored drippy candle holders and a historical blemish on interior design that we, as a nation, will never live down.  Yet all know of the runaway success of Italian wines in the U.S. which has been growing for over a decade and shows no indication of slowing down.  Even those who were lucky enough to start out on a cheap Beaujolais years ago have most certainly moved on to more satisfyingly overpriced French wines and will never judge the world from Gamay-colored glasses again.
Our point is German wines are still judged with the same litmus test that have been outgrown by nearly every other wine category.  It seems everyone remembers the abusive bottle of swill (Black and Blue Nun?) gulped from a paper bag after prom behind some skating rink.  However, when asked what they think of German wine now, the same people who all know that French and Italian and California and, well, Lebanon for that matter, all make good wine (despite any earlier evidence) will all say “Yar, it’s all too sweet for me”…and make faces like I do when I’m trying to coax a wood-carved chardonnay past my palate.

Granted, Germany has yet to throw itself into the U.S. market in a manner that demystifies public misconceptions orraises the bar on the perceived level of quality.  That is what weare trying to do here at Cellars International, be with it our traveling circus of winemakers, our German Wine Master Class, tasting notes and vineyard profiles on our web site, or newsletters such as this one.

The irony concerning German wines in the market is that while many assume the wines, for the most part, are sweet not many are prepared to accept just how dry these wines can be. When tasted in order from dry to medium-dry to fruity at any event, many prefer slightly sweeter wines despite the inclination to tout only liking dry wines.  Guess what?  There are German wines drier than anything California could hope to grind out, but try telling that to the average (or even above average) consumer on the street…or in an alley…or under a bridge.  These dry wines, or trocken, are normally not as fruit-specific as they are dirt-driven…packed with minerally or earthy flavors.  Some people are taken back by wines that are steeped in the pit of the fruit and not the flesh, or peppered with the spicy tang of the vineyard soil rather the fragrant perfume of tropical tree snacks.  It’s funny that in the correct context people who prefer dry (read oake) will actually gravitate to a wine that is fruitier just because it is so appealing in relation to wines that don’t reveal such a wide variety of attractive fruit nuances.

The operative word here is "context".  Just as a sweeter wine seems to make more sense to the palate when consumed with, say, a spicy Thai dish rather than with fried chicken, so does a bone-dry wine need the proper foil to show its true colors.  As much as folks endorse dry wines, it’s funny to note how much of the food we eat often has subtle, intrinsic sweetness.  Carrots, for instance, even uncooked, are sweeter than most trocken wines.  Celery can be sweeter than a trocken wine.  Caramelized onions will taste like a dessert next to a dry Riesling.  Many who try a normal Mosel Spätlese will first notice its fruitiness, missing the apparent zingy acidity, and might even call it a dessert wine.  Put it next to a dessert and watch the wine turn into a lemon.  A dry wine from the Pfalz or the Rheingau might even be the barometer needed to show the palate just how sweet nearly everything else is!

So, what do you do with a wine that shows little to no hint of sweetness?  It’s hard to find foods that don’t have a little hidden R.S. in them and that’s the trick when matching food to this vinification style.  Mastering food matched with very dry wine may be the necessary groundwork for appreciating how medium-dry and fruitier style wines work with food as well.  It isn’t easy to find a recipe that doesn’t have a slightly sweet component.  Fresh peas added to a cream sauce, a splash of Malmsey instead of Sercial Madeira in the sauté pan, even basil, added to the plate moments before serving all bring the requirements for a fruity wine up a notch.  Consider a freshly shucked, briny, tangy oyster on the half shell.  Unless we’re talking about one of those sweet, gooey little Kumamotos, most oysters are agreeably a salty window to the sea. Suddenly, the wine that earlier seemed focused only in a mineral bath of bobbing apricot pits has now met its match.  While the Tang Dynasty of the Soil and the Twang Dynasty of the Sea do their dance, the otherwise hidden dragon becomes crouching apricot fruit on the palate.  Didn’t see that movie?  There’s a reason Miss Chablis was in the Garden of Good and Evil (at midnight) and not dining on shellfish.

Consider another kickboxing bout with a dry Pfalz or Rhein.  How many diners insist on an average Pinot Grigio as their dry white when enjoying Mediterranean cuisine, just to keep in form?  So what does an anchovy want for its last drink?  There is a simple Venetian dish of sautéed onions, crushed anchovies and capers tossed with Bucatini that vibrates when matched with an earthy trocken.  Again, the salty spank of this dish makes mad Italian love to the brooding minerality of a trocken selection… and the lurking fruit profiles unfold and finally cuddle on the palate.  It’s as though the wine wants to be dragged through the mud a little before showing its stuffing.  Maybe that’s why mushrooms make a trocken wine pop up as well.

It isn’t as difficult as it seems.  You don’t need to slurp raw oysters and twirl noodles soaked in bruised anchovies to enjoy a trocken wine (although it might make a better world.)  Many delicate fish presentations, cream or butter finished sauces, in fact, most ‘classic’ styles of cooking require these types of wines, mainly because of the firm acidity and obvious lack of palate-numbing oak.

These wines clearly deserve a chance in the culinary theater that has been dominated too long by fat, lazy domestic superstars who continue to garner tabloid praise for lackluster performances on the palate. There are plenty of other dishes in the U.S that are being manhandled by wines with either too much oak or alcohol that need rescue.  And there are plenty of other mediocre white wines masquerading as dry that should definitely be put to the test.  If Germany is going to be continually labeled as being only the sweet capital of the wine empire, well, we’d like a rematch.

Many in the last decades have climbed on the ABC bandwagon.  Now fashionable to drink ‘anything but chardonnay’ you’d think there would be more exposure to these selections.  But look at most wine lists carved by restaurants who make this stand: well, here’s plenty of Sauvignon Blanc from around the world…nice wood barrels, 13.5 alcohol…oh, here’s a section of Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris from Oregon…more barrel aging, some with malo, 13.0 alcohol…maybe a nice Marsanne…no, a Viognier!…this one’s just 14.5 alcohol and only 8 months in new oak…several few white Riojas and Albariños from Portugal…a nice collection of Semillons and Rieslings from Australia…nice Pinot Grigio vertical…plenty of Alsace…hey, they make dry Riesling… oh, let’s try Austria…great! 23 selections of Gruener Veltliner…this list is making a stand…hmmm, but no dry wines from Germany.

ABC or EBG (everything but German)?  There are plenty of white wines still behaving like chardonnay, despite what they’re called.  Yet there is nothing on the planet like a dry Riesling from Germany.  Still, we expect to see a selection of new, hot Bosnian Gewurztraminers or Kabul-net Sauvignons take hold before the curtain is lifted on dry German wines.  In the mean time, if this van is rockin’, we’re drinkin’ trocken.  

Selections from the Mess Tent

Bucatini with anchovies (for two)

Chop a small white onion and sauté in a good squirt of olive oil until translucent, a little less than 10 minutes. Drop a handful of Bucatini into boiling water about 5 minutes into working the onion.

The little hole in the pasta will cause it to cook a little quicker than linguini or spaghetti (figure around 6 minutes) so plan on dumping your noodles into the strainer about the time you are stirring in a puddle of 10 mashed anchovy fillets into the onions over lowered heat.  It will disappear into the oil and onions.  Add a handful of rinsed capers to the pan and toss the drained Bucatini in, mixing to coat all the noodles. This isn’t a ‘saucy’ recipe.  The success is the subtlety of the noodles coated with this intense, tangy layer.  A spoonful of reserved water from the pasta pot can help if it seems the ingredients are too dry in the pan, but it won’t take much to coat the noodles.  Add a good twist of ground black pepper.  A pinch of fresh chopped broad leaf parsley adds a bright edge to this earthy dish. Do not add cheese, and as much as I like garlic, do it without.

Other suggested wines for this dish are the dry Estate Rieslings from Pfeffingen, Gunderloch, or the dry Pinot Gris from Weinhaus Heger.

Rudi Wiest Selections
by Cellars International, Inc.
phone 760.566.0499 - info@germanwine.net - fax 760.566.0533

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