Selbach Oster
This week Mosel came to Napa in the form of the avuncular, engaging Johannes Selbach Oster, and we tasted ten of his wines at Back Room Wines.
The landscape in Mosel is every bit as spectacular as the photos suggest: steep slopes dramatically rising from the winding river. The slopes are not just beautiful though, they serve a distinct purpose as Johannes explained. We wine students all learn that the slopes are important because the river reflects sunlight and retains heat that is released at night to aid ripening, with the slate soils having a similar effect. This is all true, but it’s a bit more subtle than that. At the bottom of the slope, it’s warmer and there is more moisture and therefore more chance of rot: a good thing if it occurs after the regular harvest for noble rot. Dry wines are more likely to come from vines planted on the mid-slope or the top slope, where the cool air which has risen up through the vineyard produces wines with “screeching” acidity, in the words of Johannes.
He also spoke about the effects of climate change which in Mosel is not necessarily a bad thing. Ripeness has always been a challenge which is why sweet wines were historically so prized as proof of a site that was able to generate enough sugars in the grapes. Ripeness is much less of an issue now, and dry wines are much more common (which suits consumers’ tastes). However, acidity remains high. Johannes joked that he was once lean and thin and all bone, now he has a lot more weight on him: and that’s the case with Riesling.
The time of picking has changed. Harvest used to begin mid-October (the 18th being his mother’s birthday) and end in November; now the harvest is over by the end of October. Picking for the different styles used to be elongated, but now happens much closer together. I asked Johannes as we tasted the 2020 Kabinett from the Schlossberg vineyard how they decided when to pick the grapes for that style. He replied that the decision was partly visual, as picking was when the grapes look green-gold in colour. It’s also done to taste but the decision has to be made fast as ripening now happens so quickly: within a few days the sugars accumulate and the resulting wine would be too heavy and fat for the delicate Kabinett style. Johannes’s analogy was cooking (he used a number of food metaphors): if you’re cooking a medium rare steak you have to stop when it’s medium rare.
When and how to pick was another point of discussion. Johannes and his father had an ongoing debate: his father believed that the grapes from a parcel should all be picked together for a more natural expression of the site. Johannes disagreed, arguing that picking bunches separately from the same parcel would produce a better wine with more consistent ripeness and structure, as grapes exposed to sunlight ripen quicker than those more shaded. They each made a separate wine from their different picking philosophies: Johannes immediately agreed his father’s wine was better.
The highlight of the tasting was the 2010 Rotlay, named after a parcel in the famous Sonnenuhr vineyard. The vines are over 100 years old and ungrafted (Johannes mentioned with a wink that it’s now illegal to plant vines without rootstock). It’s a wine which never achieves full fermentation: the very first wine they made was still fermenting after ten months and as it still tasted delicious they just gave up on getting it to complete dryness. Residual sugar is 14g/L, but the wine is extraordinarily fresh and vibrant. Nearly thirteen years old, it felt like it had been made yesterday. Johannes stated that petrol aromas in Riesling are a fault and not to be encouraged: it was remarkable that a wine with over twelve years’ ageing had none of those aromas.
A universal change to winemaking has been the introduction of stainless steel in the 1970s and 80s. The tanks allow temperature control for a fresh, fruity style but they are also reductive. The tanks used at Selbach Oster are large to prevent the wines from being overly so. The winery still has many 1,000 litre old oak foudres which the wines rest in for ten months. Johannes believes this allows the wine to open and breathe and that a wine aged in inert vessels changes very quickly when put into bottle whereas a wine aged in foudres remains stable and consistent for many years.
Selbach Oster are a traditional producer, making classic styles of Riesling from dry to sweet and the labels are very German. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t experiment. We tasted their pét-nat (“Above the Clouds”), the second they have produced after a New York winemaker told Johannes he wouldn’t dare make one. There’s also a zero-alcohol wine (called “Funkelwurtz” and almost zero at 0.03%) made from Muscat and Silvaner which is slightly fizzy. They buy the wine and remove the alcohol with crossflow filtration. It’s one of the better zero alcohol wines I’ve tried but still lacked character and interest. That’s the crux of wine: it needs alcohol.
But the low to medium level of alcohol is also the joy of Riesling: Johannes half-joked that you can drink lots of Riesling and feel “groovy” rather than drunk. Groovy isn’t a word I’ve used since the 1980s, but it’s now how I’m going to describe every Riesling I taste.
