2002 Gimmeldinger Eselshaut Rieslaner Auslese

Anything I or my journalistic colleagues write about the first post-Schwarz vintage at Muller-Catoir will be picked over in some detail and will feed a thriving market for innuendo and insinuation. And throughout this year's journey, my impressions were solicited by other growers. Let me therefore be as succinct in my appraisal as I am able. Martin Franzen and his new team, who had to do a lot of learning about these vineyards as they went, have done excellent work. The refined, sharply etched, and ultimately somewhat austere impression left by Franzen's Trocken rieslings is not really too far distant from the scrupulously clean and relatively lean dry wines that Hans-Gunter Schwarz bottled from vintage 2001. The reductive and fructose-dominated style of sweet wines adopted by Moselaner Franzen, with its precarious high-wire act of sugar-acid balance, also follows a line that is at least parallel to the path being pursued in recent vintages at Muller-Catoir. What struck one as most changed this year was the sheer numerical predominance of dry wines. This, I was told, was due in part to market demand, in part to personal preference. But Franzen clearly also thought his choices an appropriate response to the character of the vintage, and in that, I suspect he may have overreacted. Sadly, a nearly calamitous share of Catoir's 2002 scheurebe and rieslaner was lost to stem rot and ended its life ignominiously as mulch. (Terry Theise) Also recommended: 2002 Haardter Burgergarten Riesling Kabinett Trocken, 2002 Haardter Herrenletten Riesling Spatlese Trocken, 2002 Gimmeldinger Mandelgarten Riesling Spatlese.