"This is a winery in which virtually every wine is a masterpiece. Go ahead, pull a cork and get turned on by
wine again! Maybe you’ll feel as I do: people have to know these wines,
to see the possibilities of wine!" -Michael Skurnik
Since the arrival of young Mosel-born, Martin Franzen,
at this great estate, we have been
struck by a degree of qualitative continuity and stylistic affinity
with the wisdom and artistry of Hans-Gunter Schwarz's 36-year tenure as cellar master. In a very real sense, the legacy of Schwarz – “activism in the
vines, minimalism in the cellar” – has seeped indelibly into the fabric
of nearly every top winery in the Pfalz. And although Franzen and a largely new
team were forced to rediscover the keys to
these vines and sites, they are the same vines and sites so carefully
tended, trained and conscientiously replanted over the past decades by
the then team of Catoir and Schwarz. As a winemaker, Franzen likes extended lees-contact, ultra-reductive vinification, and
when he says “dry” he means dry. What the Germans now call
“modern-Trocken” i.e. up to the legal limit of 9g.l. residual sugar is
not his style.
The 2005 Mussbacher Eselshaut Riesling Kabinett trocken, from cooler
sections of that site, smells of fresh lemon, wood smoke, and quarry
dust along with a yeasty fermentative overlay. Not trocken, it’s a lavish peachy wine, drenched in
orange-blossom and talc; in the best sense frivolous and witty, with
high tones of freesia and comice pears.
The brightness and pungency persist on the palate, which displays a
subtly oily texture and leads to an adamantly dusty, wet stone mineral
finish. This impressively concentrated and frisky dry Kabinett will be
come even more expressive over the next several years.
