Anders Tørneskog wrote:

> Hi folks.
> Following my annual excursion to the middle Mosel you may now have my
> impressions :-)
> On 2001:
> That vintage reconfirmed it's position as one of the most charming and
> attractive Spätlese vintages ever. These wines were virtually unchanged
> from last year and so would appear to keep well for some time. The
> Auslese wines were somewhat less consistent last year, imho, and still
> are. Those that were good then now did fairly well with a little bit of
> added
> smoothness and maturity. Not bad at all, but I still prefer those
> Spätleses, for some reason.
> On 2002:
> Another good vintage with fine quality from QbA to Beerenauslese level.
> There seemed to be a bit of inconsistency however, as many growers offered
> the full range from pedestrian mediocrity to outstanding specimens of wine
> making without any relationship to quality classing. With one, his
> Kabinett was glorious, his Auslese unremarkable, with another it could be
> the other
> way around. Another would have very fine dry wines and less appealing
> sweet
> ones where yet another had the opposite. It would appear then that this
> vintage had been more difficult for the growers to handle well. Careful
> selection therefore seemed more important than for 2001.
> Compared to the previously mentioned Spätleses many of the more succesful
> wines seemed to me to have an added layer of complexity and hidden nuances
> begging exploration in the years to come and there were some very good
> Beerenausleses and Eiswein.
> The classing Prädikat system also seem to be crumbling, making it less
> useful as a buying guide - you have to taste the wine, read the label
> carefully and ask the wine maker outright to make sure what you really get
> - at one point I bought a dry Kabinett, which by itself would have been an
> abomination, but that had 12% of alcohol and so really was a lean Auslese
> (the grower confirmed it was 95 Oechsle...).
> It is also notable that prices have risen all over. The once almost
> implausible bargains that were the rule with top Germans are now harder to
> find. Top Auslese and above now command about the same prices in Euros
> that they once did in Marks, in fact a doubling in 4 years.
> On 2003:
> The grapes survived the spectacular heat of this summer up to late august
> and looked very good. Quite a bit of rain and cold weather in September
> have pumped them up to bursting some growers said, however, and they
> prayed for dry and sunny weather till mid-October (this was 2 weeks ago)
> so that excess water might evaporate and thereby raise sugar and acid
> levels. It would seem that we run a small risk of having diluted and flat
> wines, relatively speaking, but many were fairly confident that another
> usable
> vintage was in the offing. Time will show. Otherwise, harvest of lesser
> wine was well under way then, pretty early, but I've no info on these
> grapes.
> Fwiw,
> Anders
>
>
> --
> antispam: personal part of real mailaddress is backwards...

Hello Anders, yes the german quality system with qulitätswein, Kabinet
Spaetlese Auslese, Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese is a nightmare.
You can not only specify the quality of wine by degrees of oechsle.
At the other Hand, many vinemakers downgrade Auslese to Spaetlese ...
On My opinion The Mosel you can finde a lot of mainstream stuff (supermarket
quality, 80% and relatively few middleclass winemakers but also relatively
much world class winemakers (JJ Prüm, Scharzhof Egon Mueller, Fritz Haag,
Dr. Loosen, Molitor,

If you speak a little bit German, I can suggest you the following links

www.wein-plus.de
(Excellent German weinguide with a big database about German and Austrian
wines) and
www.weinguide.de

Gault Milleau 2002 Wein guide Germany.

My favorits for bargains comes from the Mittelrhein (August Perll) and
Florian Weingart.

Ok the ammount of grapes per hectar is a little bit big from this vineyards
but for the price......

To travell along the rhine (accross the lorely) is very funny....

Best regards
--
Columbo