Egon Muller Scharzhof Riesling 2020
Grape: Riesling
The Look: Straw yellow with a touch of green. Pale.
On the nose: Lime, slate, honeysuckle, yuzu. Straightforward and good expression of Mosel riesling. Could use a year or two to develop more petroleum.
On the palate: Off-dry, crazy high acid. In balance. Surprising amount of body for a 10% alcohol wine, medium. Really effervescent and crisp on the palate. So refreshing. Elevated limeade.
Price Point: 53 EUR / 613 NOK at auction
Terningkast: 4/6
Why is my wine sweet? Before technology could stabilize the temperature of a fermentation, the cold winters in Germany would naturally halt the fermentation and often leave a wine with residual sugars and 5-10% alcohol. Modern technology could take a wine like this all the way to dry if the producer wanted to, but the fermentation is still stopped to respect this history and the style. And while dry rieslings are delicious too, they could never be this fun.
I’m going to rip off the band-aid, risk sacrilege, and potentially get myself banned from Germany: Even though this is made by a great producer and from great grapes (Egon Muller’s TBA wines have sold for upwards of 15,000EUR at auction), attempting to savor and dissect this wine like a connoisseur would be missing the point. This is German glou glou. It’s full of flavor, low ABV, off-dry, and effervescent. It’s delicious, but it’s kind of dumb. And that is great. I could crush 2 or 3 bottles in a deck chair.
This is a wine to drink with camo and crocs on—a yard work wine sold at white table prices. I want to drink this like a hard seltzer at a football tailgate. I want to drink this standing over a grill with roman sandals on as sweat drips down my forehead and the marinated chicken is getting burned. This wine makes me want to imitate the Ray Lewis tunnel dance as I drink it.
And it is profoundly frustrating to me that well made wines, like this, have become so expensive, because this style should not be up market or exclusive. It’s great that there is demand for it, but allocations, auctions, the international market, and general scarcity have created a bubble where bottles that really don’t suit the part are thrust into the role of being a luxury good. This should not be drunk at a Michelin star restaurant with light jazz playing over near silence, this should be poured into your mouth from someone standing on a bar.
