OK, based on my last taste of the 97 this won’t be necrophilia, but what more can you ask from the title of a post than a suggestion of horrible sexual perversion?
Riesling Auslese Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Fuder 6 1997, Fritz Haag
A really strong nose of that complex citrus character we like to call ‘petrolly’. It is quite amazingly mineral as well. This is properly mature and really quite classy on the nose. Very attractive, but smells like it is reaching time to drink. The palate doesn’t seem that sweet, but it is. Top acidity there, pleasingly painful in my stomach; yeah! Very long, rather complex and once again properly mature on the palate. This is quite, quite lovely. I would suggest up for drinking in the next few years but over that period it will provide top bunny pleasure.
Riesling Auslese Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr 2007, Fritz Haag
Oh lovely, charming, beautiful, ripe peachy aromas of Muscat-like fruit. Yummy, yummy, yummy. This is highly attractive, anyone could smell this and instantly fall in love with it. There is more to it than that, though, it has lots of the same kind of slatey, subtly creamy minerality that the 1997 also has in spades. Super complex class on the nose. Mmmm… the palate is totally delicious. Lovely sweetness, great acidity and incredible minerality. The harmony is simply superb. Clearly a top vintage with a wonderfully happiness-inducing future in front of it. When I tried the 1997 on release many years ago I recall it having the fruit of this, but not quite the ripeness and acidity, but my memory could easily be misleading me. We have to say that this is a truly marvellous bottle of wine, though.
Is there a moral to this story?
To drink young or to drink old? Or should we just be happy to have the opportunity to drink at all?
The prevaling opinion with those I opened the bottles with was that mature is better. I cannot decide, both have their pleasures. The chap who was my captain in my first year in the Oxford blind tasting team insisted for many years that there was no point in ageing German Riesling. We’ve only just convinced him that there is a point.
But, yeah man, we should have big grins slapped across our faces when we try such things.
The 2007 wasn’t the slightest bit closed, Jeremy.
Haag somehow seems to escape the closed thing, unlike Prum at the other extreme, but also Zilliken, Muller, Dönnhoff and all matters of others. Also, I imagine that you are referring to our conversation over Künstler, in which case you are comparing Haag’s top vineyard at the Auslese level to a comparatively modest Kabinett. In my objective reality, I would expect it to deliver more fireworks in almost any circumstance. Am I being too reasonable again?
I don’t believe I ever suggested there is no point in ageing German Riesling. That would be silly. But I do like them young. I never understood why the term “infanticide” should be applied to wines that we enjoy drinking when they are young. You obviously enjoyed the 2007 rather a lot. Why should we feel any burden of catholic guilt for doing something we enjoy, and which does no harm? My own inclination is to possess lots of German Riesling, and to drink it often, especially in summer, half of it young, and the other half aged. But the main thing is to have lots of it.
Jeremy: I wasn’t comparing them except in their relative stage of drinkability. Clearly, a Haag Auslese will blow the socks off most other wines.
Peter: I never feel any Catholic guilt.
Yes, I have to agree that they are very drinkable and that I very much want to drink them… But I bought most of them for my son, so hands have to stay off those wines for a few years more…