Muller-Catoir’s 2008 Haardter Herzog Rieslaner Trockenbeerenauslese is a masterpiece written in an entirely different key from their similarly awesome and embryonic Schlossel T.B.A. This blasts from the glass like a gale of salty, alkaline sea breeze, along with pungent scents of spruce resin, dried apricot, and white pepper. Almost gelatinous in texture and shot through with tooth-threatening fresh lemon – yet, for all that, with an alluring suggestion of creaminess – it makes a pure, penetrating, rapier bee-line for your tonsils. With even less overt sweetness than the corresponding Schlossel, the finish is positively implacable, searing in brightness, and accompanied by an astonishingly intense sense of saline minerality for a nobly sweet elixir. It might leave you licking your wounds, not your lips! Plan on following some for three or more decades, provided you’re young enough, brave enough, and wealthy enough.
You just had to be patient, said Martin Franzen about the 2008 harvest, but then once the grapes were ready, things went at a pretty good clip. We didn’t attempt to pick on into November. He volunteered a characterization of the wines as, incredibly playful and vibratory, which both amused and comforted me, seeing how often I had myself by then used those metaphors to describe some of the best of them. The recent evolution of this estate under Franzen’s direction – about which I have written extensively in issue 185 and elsewhere – continues on an exciting trajectory, and in retrospect I must say that with the possible exception of the two vintages of awkward transition immediately following the departure of long-time director Hans-Gunter Schwarz, at no point since I began tasting the wines of Muller-Catoir in the early ‘80s has this estate slipped from the apex of the Pfalz – indeed, of its nation’s – viticultural pecking order. Following current German fashion, Muller-Catoir now renders a Sauvignon Blanc, but I forgot to ask to taste its current installment, after having missed out on the inaugural rendition due to ignorance. With Pinot Blanc, though, Muller-Catoir is on solid ground, this grape’s virtues having even been enshrined in the Pfalz realization of Grosses Gewachs, and the estate’s history of success with it being long and illustrious.
Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300
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