pop & pour

by Raymond Lamontagne

After yesterday’s solid start, my anticipation is running high. It turns out that anticipation and trepidation can co-exist in equal measure. How am I going to keep up with all these blogs? The same way I kept up the last two years, I suppose, via doses of careful scheduling and an iron resolve to do what I love: drink wine. As Peter mentioned, this year’s Bricks Wine Advent offering looks like a particularly diverse mélange of different bottle shapes and even alternative packages. The wrapping for Day 2 conceals another distinct bottle shape, this one lanky and elongate. This can only be a flute, speaking to its Germanic (or at least Germanic-influenced) origins.

Voila. K.H. Schneider! This happens to be one of my all-time favourite German producers from the Nahe, a region whose stony soils continue to provide much inspiration; Nahe winemakers walk a stylistically taut rope between the cool mineral elegance of the Mosel and the riper fruits of the Pfalz and Rheinhessen. To be transparent, there are a few of us here in Calgary who will vociferously imbibe anything and everything K.H. Schneider. I justify this stance by appealing to winemaker Andi Schneider’s emphasis on organic viticulture and spontaneous fermentations, an approach that yields truly honest, authentic wines of place. Increasingly I am inclined to agree with Terry Theise when he argues that such authenticity is a quality criterion that must come before other important yardsticks such as balance and intensity. If the terroir Andi farms is a vinyl record, his deft “low intervention” winemaking touch is the phonograph needle that precisely decodes the soil’s music for our drinking pleasure. But do take note: this is not the expected Riesling. It is something much, much stranger. Are we, team Schneider, being pranked?

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornfelder

I love it already. Dornfelder was created in 1955 by German viticulturalist August Herold. As you can see from the diagram above, Dornfelder is in fact a cross between crosses (!), with some pretty big names among the original four parents. It has been suggested that Dornfelder has genes from every black grape grown in Germany up until its creation.  A rare example of a successful man-made crossing (note that it is not a hybrid, as all parent stock is vinifera), Dornfelder is less obscure that you might think, in recent years becoming the second-most planted black wine grape in Germany. Vigorous and high yielding, Dornfelder also has something that its ancestors Trollinger and Blauer Portugieser do not: loads and loads of colour due to high levels of pigments called anthrocyanins. Dornfelder stands alone in Germany for its ability to make wines that are almost black in their deep purple intensity, with a soft texture, decent acidity, and characteristic aromas that conjure up dark berries, cherries, and more unique herbal/spice notes that some compare to bitters. Unlike many grapes used predominantly as colouring ingredients, this one has its own rather assertive flavor profile. Dornfelder even made inroads into the United States, Canada, and South America. Have you ever been this excited about a viticultural cross? I thought not.

The 2016 K.H. Schenider Dornfelder Trocken half-bottle features a particularly crumbly stubborn cork, or at least mine did. Ultimately worth the effort. This is dark purple alright, but not completely opaque. The nose conjures up all sorts of underripe blackberry and huckleberry for me right out of the gate, but a balancing woodsy halo of dried violets, allspice, clove, fennel seeds, rosemary, rhubarb, stinging nettles, crushed gravel, and (yes indeed) herbal bitters (orange peel? quinine?), which prevents this from being anywhere near histrionic. Fruits much redder (cherry Nibs, strawberry, cranberry) begin to wink through the strange blueberry-bog-meets-baroque-darkness that was my initial impression. The acidity is buoyant but far from cutting, and the tannins form a light powder. My mind keeps coming back to cough syrup: give this a decent chill to mitigate this effect, unless of course you dig this sort of thing. And don’t get me wrong, this could very well be the world’s greatest Dornfelder, or at least the prettiest. Although I would have to try a few more exemplars to firm up that take, this is clearly winking at me. It is pleasantly odd to feel that a bottle of Dornfelder is an old friend. Thank you August Herold.

89+ points

Cork Rating: 3/10 (putting aside the difficulties I had extracting this, I like the font but am otherwise underwhelmed, if that’s a word.)