Stuart Pigott's Planet Wine

I remember when I was a child I loved the show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. It was a show hosted by an eccentric British man named Robin Leach, who occupied a place in American culture not so dissimilar to the one Stuart Pigott occupies here in Germany. He was an interloper who bridged two worlds—the luxurious ones of the rich and famous, and the normal boring ones that the people at home watching led. At the end of each episode Robin Leach would end with his catchphrase: “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams.”

Champagne, that insubstantial effervescent stuff, and caviar—those delicate little eggs—are two of the most overpriced foodstuffs in the world. We need only a name: Cristal, or a place: Iran, and we are ready to plunk down buckets of cash to experience the heights of gastronomy. Most of us purchase these items only on special occasions and imbue them with so many superlatives that we can hardly taste them at all. A high price should be indicative of a standard of quality, but often, the price stands in for the quality. After all, if you open a bottle of €200 Cristal you don’t want it to taste like a cheap Prosecco.

Funnily enough, when a mix of 15 wine experts and heavy users got together this past monday at Hammers Weinkostbar to blind taste 26 sparkling wines, that is exactly what happened. Our mission was to price these bottles on taste alone. With each swish and spit we had to ask ourselves, “What does this taste like it’s worth?” It was a challenging assignment, to say the least. For one thing, 26 bottles is a rough load on the taste-buds and nose. Sparkling wines are especially difficult because after awhile those little bubbles feel like they are sandblasting your tongue.

On a more theoretical level, the pricing of these wines by taste, began to feel on many levels, like a personality test. I began fretting over what it would say about me if I underpriced everything, like some sort of coupon clipping housewife who refuses to buy the good mustard because it’s not on sale. On the other hand, I worried about overpricing everything and coming off as a novice amidst the wine experts gathered at this event. In the end though, the pricing average for most of the bottles was widely varied.

All of us were aware that the wines had a price difference of factor 50, with the most expensive wine costing around €200, or 50 times more than the cheapest one, but none of us could recognize this bottle on taste alone. The bottle in question was a 2004 Roederer „Cristal“ Brut. In my tasting notes, I have written, “yeast, soft bubbles, pinot; a bit one note—would price between €8 and €20.” In the end I gave it the top price in that spectrum. I didn’t want to undervalue my own assessment. I never would have guessed that what tasted like a 20 euro bottle actually cost €179. Another participant wrote succinctly, “I get no kick from this champagne.” Stuart, it should be noted, priced the bottle at a mere €7.

But not every bottle had a heart of foam. Some of these sparklers were valued higher than their actual price. The 2008 Weingut Klostermühle „Monfort Brut“ was valued at € 23,40 but only costs € 12,50 at Hammers. Another hero of the tasting was the 2009 Winzerhof Stahl „Prickelnd Secco“ which was valued on average at €9,53 but cost a mere € 6,50 at Hof. Amazingly, the bottle that I brought along had a great showing as well. The 2008 Weingut Bamberger „Pinot Cuvée“ was valued on average at € 16,93 (I valued it at €40 in my tasting notes) and only costs € 14,50 at Vin Aqua Vin.

If the purpose of this tasting was to weed out the high priced crap that is sold on name alone and bring to the surface ingenious newcomers who are using methods like Co2 injection to bring their bottles to life, then it was a rousing success. The third most highly rated bottle from the tasting, the NV Weingut Kirsten „Pinot Rosé Brut“ retails for €12 at Hof and it’s bottles like these that make it possible for all of us to have “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams.”

Before Hammers’ Weinkostbar opened in 2007 as a purveyor of wine and sundries, the location was a butcher shop. An 80 year-old “Fleischerei” sign still hangs above the door and, apart from adding a little of that Kreuzberg character to the place, it also seems to suggest that when you enter Hammer’s you are to treat it like a respectable neighborhood butchers. This may seem out of place for a wine-bar, but Hammers, like your local butcher, doesn’t want to be considered fancy. Instead, it would like local residents to view it as an easy place to drop in, have a chat, a glass of wine and a little snack.

The Hammers motto is “Unkompliziert und Kompetent,” or, “Uncomplicated and Competent.” And if they served beer, this model would be simple for Berliners to understand. The city is chock full of cozy little bars where you can stop in at the end of your work day, sidle up to your usual table, and leisurely enjoy a pint and the evening paper before heading home. But wine—no matter how easy it is to access, and no matter how cheap—still carries connotations of wealth and social snobbery.

Enter Jurgen Hammer in his Levis, work boots and zip-up sweater. He looks as far from snobby as one can get and that look, along with his very casual approach to customers, immediately puts people at ease. I entered the bar on a Monday at 6 p.m. and was greeted by Jurgen, his wife and business partner Manuela, and the gruff crooning of Johnny Cash. I felt immediately as if I’d found my bar.

One of the best things about Hammers is their selection of Spatburgunder, which translates directly to “Late Burgundy” but which is more famously referred to as Pinot Noir. The bar sells t-shirts emblazoned with the message, “es ist nie so früh für spätburgunder,” or “it is never to early for Late Burgundy,” and they even sell a house-blended Frühburgunder, a close cousin to Pinot Noir, which ripens earlier than the classic varietal. I drank a glass of the 2008 Hammer’s Frühburgunder Trocken Gutsabfullung, which was grown in the Nahe region and then blended by Jurgen Hammer himself. The result is just stupendous table wine, a term that I’m sure connotes lesser quality, but which I am using to denote a preferred daily wine. I drank a glass along with a little Wurststulle (a simple sausage sandwich on brown bread with lots of spicy mustard).

That a man like Jurgen Hammer—who sports a large tattoo with the words “Riesling Rules” on his right arm—should become a player in the German wine scene, is a testament to the wine revolution taking place in this country. This year, Jurgen will become the director of the Berlin branch of the German wine and Sommelier school (Hammer@weinschule-b.com) and I’m sure his approach, though no less knowledgeable, will differ greatly from his predecessors.

The restaurant Hot Spot on the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Eisenzahnnstrasse is about as unassuming as a restaurant can be. At three in the afternoon, the place is empty except for two suited co-workers sipping soup, and a woman in sweatpants waiting for a take-out order. I am greeted by the owner Jianhua Wu, whose name means build up China, is the recent subject of a top-rated New York Times article, and the man behind the best wine list at a Chinese restaurant in all of Berlin, probably Germany, and possibly the world.

It’s hard to imagine that wine is a major player on the Hot Spot menu, especially when no one seems to be drinking anything but tea and there is only one noisy cooler filled with chilled whites in sight. But scanning through the menu reveals quite another story. First of all, the menu is split roughly in half, the first half contains dishes like Gebratenes Shanghai-Gemüse for 11€. On the wine side of the menu, there’s a bottle of Château Margaux 1er Grand Cru Classé for just shy of 1,200€. I asked Wu how many bottles of this impressive wine he carried, and he said, “Two. I had three but I drank one. It was a very excellent wine. 1990 is an exceptional year.”

I should mention here that Jianhua Wu is a sprightly man who could be anywhere from his late 30’s to his early 50’s. He looks at you with friendly concentration when he speaks and he speaks softly and slowly, taking long pauses that suggest he is no rush for the interview to end. He also speaks in German, which meant that I must speak in German, which is not a language I am used to interviewing people in. I am positive I am making mistakes, abundant and embarrassing mistakes. Jianhua Wu does not let on that he notices. It must take a lot of patience on his part to do this.

Wu moved to Berlin in 1984, an easy year to remember if you’re a George Orwell fan or wine fan, because both associations with that year spelled disaster. Just about everywhere in Europe there was a catastrophic vintage. Despite coming to Berlin at that portentous time, Wu made the best of things. He studied engineering but quickly changed tracks in order to open an MSG friendly Chinese food stall. From behind a small greasy counter, Wu watched as his adopted city went from one extreme to the other in little more than a decade.

It was around the mid 90’s that Wu started to become interested in wine and it was the wine that changed his fate. He set before himself the almost insurmountable task of creating a restaurant that specialized in sophisticated Chinese cuisine and top class German wines.

Wu refers to himself as an autodidact in respect to wine, and is very quick to mention that his enjoyment of wine is simple and straightforward as opposed to the redolent, heady interest of wine critics and connoisseurs. But he has certainly become a discerning connoisseur and his wine list proves it.

I had the honor of eating and drinking with Wu on what happened to be my 30^th birthday. I was not expecting anything but 15 minutes of time from a busy and successful restaurateur. What I got, however, was a five dish tasting menu, a full bottle of wine for each course, an alcohol fueled (though undeniably inspiring) interview and. By 6 p.m., I had one of the most searing alcohol induced headaches I have ever experienced.

The Chinese food at Hot Spot is on quite another level from what I’ve experienced in Berlin. Wu employs both a Shanghai and Szechuan province chef and the menu represents a duel between those two culinary traditions. On one end of the menu are Szechuan classics like crispy roast duck, smoked with tea leaves. This duck was flavorful, well executed, tender and delicate—the kind of dish that makes your brain sing out “Meat!!” On the other end, we ate chicken stir-fried with expertly julienned ginger, lemongrass, and chili. Wu asked me if I enjoyed spicy food and I fumbled through some terribly mangled sentence about taco trucks in LA. But he must have understood me enough to bring out something that I have been waiting 4 years in Berlin to taste—spicy Chinese food. It was a miracle. Suddenly my tongue was alive with the heat of chili and the medicinal sting of ginger. Wu recommended I drink a 2009 Jos. Christoffel Jr. Erdener Treppchen/Mosel Riesling Spatlese along with the stir fry. The cool melon sweetness of the wine was the perfect flavor to quench the spice of the food. I noticed that Wu had a lot of wine from the wine-maker at Christoffel and I asked if he knew the man personally. He replied in this order. “Yes. He is 68. No kids. Never been married. Very nice!” If I am making Wu sound like a typical Chinese immigrant, please allow me to remind you that of the two of us, his German was drastically better than mine. His answers were sharp and pointed only because we were speaking to each other in the familiar language of Ausländer, non Germans forced to communicate to each other in a foreign tongue. In these conversations, subtext is everything. What you say with your face and hands counts more than what you actually say. I imagine that for Wu, speaking to me in this way was like being forced back to his early days in Berlin, before his German was fluent.

Watching Wu drink was also a revelation. He took a moderately full glass and downed it in two neat gulps, as if his throat were a gunked up pipe and the wine was pipe cleaner. I struggled to keep up with him, not used to drinking so much in the day and also determined to express my gratitude for his hospitality. The wines he brought out represented a respectable spectrum of the German wine scene. Wu is a big believer in Chinese food and Riesling and the Rieslings he stocks tend to be light and fruity with a tang of sweetness. The Markus Molitor 2003 Wehlener Klosterberg Spätlese, for example, was filled with tropical fruit flavors like pineapple and lychee. He also had a gorgeous 2008 Friedrich Becker Spätburgunder from the Pfalz. We drank it along side the crispy, tea smoked duck and it had the saltwater/raspberry taste that makes drinking young Spätburgunder such a pleasure.

Between the second and third bottle, Wu and I got friendlier. He mentioned the New York Times article, which depicted Wu as a Chinese-German mascot, and didn’t focus enough on his wine enthusiasm. “I love German wines. That’s enough.” Wu said, a bit woozily. “It’s too much to say that I love Germany as well.” Over a plate of sticky-sweet spare ribs, I let it slip that it was my birthday and Wu brought out a 1983 Christoffel Spätlese, the closest bottle he had to my birth year, which is 1980. I was touched by Wu’s generosity and the feeling that I was important enough to be treated to such a rare bottle. I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (minus the hooker part). I had truly been wooed by Wu.

Beitrag von  Frank Ebbinghaus

Auf in den Kampf, Pigott-Wein und zeig, was Du drauf hast! Auf dieses Kräftemessen hast Du gewartet: 29 der besten trockenen 2009er Rieslinge waren beim Berlin Riesling Cup angetreten, um die Nummer 1 zu küren. Und Du als Pirat mit dabei.

Die Auswahl hatte Blogger und Wein-Aficionado Martin Zwick zusammengestellt. Und Joel Payne, Herausgeber des Gault-Millau-Weinguides, gab vorab seinen höchsten Segen: Diese Auswahl sei identisch mit dem Weinguide-Finale um den besten trockenen Weißwein 2009. Was beinahe einer Überflüssigkeitserklärung dieser Hochglanz-Weinbibel gleichkommt. Und zugleich einige bedauerliche Auslassungen dokumentiert: Weder die sehr eindrucksvollen trockenen Top-Weine von Heymann-Löwenstein, Clemens Busch oder Forstmeister Geltz-Zilliken (mit dem „Rausch Großes Gewächs“ und dem nicht ganz trockenen „Rausch Diabas“ glückten zwei grandiose Saar-Schönheiten) schafften den Sprung in diese erlesene Runde. Noch gar die ausgezeichneten Großen Gewächse (GG) von Fürst, Horst Sauer oder Fürst Löwenstein, die ihre funkelnden Schätze erst nach jahrelanger Lagerung offenbaren.

So blieb es beim Kreis der üblichen Verdächtigen, den nur der sehr junge Julian Haart mit seinem herrlichen, fruchtig-charmanten „Goldtröpfchen Laychen“ sprengte. Erwartbar war ferner die notorische Rheinhessen-Dominanz mit gleich vier Weinen vom Weingut Keller. Allen voran der G-Max als Sieger des Abends, ein Wein von majestätischer Eleganz und Gelassenheit mit noch recht wilden Gär-Aromen – ohne Zweifel ein großes Meisterwerk. Überhaupt zeichnen sich die größten trockenen Rieslinge des Jahrgangs durch eine atemberaubende Eleganz aus. Was in Anbetracht der hohen Reife der 2009er umso bemerkenswerter ist. Deutet sich hier ein erfreulicher Stil-Wandel an? Beste Beispiele waren der ungemein fokussierte Prälat von Dr. Loosen, dessen schwelgerische Pfirsich-Aprikosen-Frucht durch eine massive Mineralität perfekt zusammengehalten wird, der sanfte, alle Aromen noch zügelnde Alte Reben „La Borne“ von Wittmann oder das „Hermannshöhle GG“ von Dönnhoff, das ebenso wie Emrich-Schönlebers großer „Halenberg GG“ seine wunderbare Ausgewogenheit erst in einigen Jahren zeigen wird. Völlig aus dem Rahmen fiel dagegen der 2009 „Berg Schlossberg“ von Georg Breuer, der mir mit seinen Brausepulvernoten und seiner blanken, fast übermächtigen Mineralität ein bisschen zu intensiv geraten war.

Und als am Ende die Kräfte der Testrunde zu erlahmen drohten, kam für den Pigott-Wein der Moment der Wahrheit. Leider war die Karaffe etwas zu warm geworden und der zuvor ausgeschenkte sehr zitronige Langenmorgen vom Weingut von Winning machte den reichlichen Alkohol des Pigott-Weins allzu schmeckbar. Gleichwohl hielt die mineralische, an Grauburgunder erinnernde Würze alles in feiner Balance und glich auch das gewisse Säuredefizit dieser Rebsorte gegenüber dem Riesling bestens aus. Gegen die größten Tropfen des Abends konnte der Pigott-Wein jedoch wenig ausrichten. Aber gegenüber dem breiten Mittelfeld (das ja ebenfalls die Spitzenklasse des trockenen deutschen Rieslings darstellt) fiel er auch nicht dramatisch ab.

Sehr bemerkenswert waren die ersten Reaktionen. Sie reichten von „großer Stoff“, „spielt hier Beethoven auf oder doch Bach?“, der Mutmaßung, einen großen Riesling des Pfälzer Weinguts Koehler-Ruprecht im Glas zu haben, über „der krasseste Wein“ und „spannend“, bis zu „good but not great“, „zu schnapsig“ und „der schlechteste Wein“. War also alles dabei. Als dann das Geheimnis gelüftet wurde, wirkte mancher zuvor Begeisterte peinlich berührt: Müller-Thurgau! Pigott! Bloß kein Wort zu viel. Und der Pigott-Wein landete auf dem letzten Platz, aber auf Tuchfühlung mit sehr respektierlichen Gewächsen wie Schloss Johannisbergs „Silberlack“ und Reinhold Haarts „Goldtröpfchen GG“. Nun war es nie Stuarts Anspruch, einen Siegerwein zu erzeugen. Sondern den Beweis zu erbringen, dass die Mega-Out- und Superbillig-Rebsorte Müller-Thurgau große Weine hervorbringen und mit Großen Gewächsen mithalten kann. Was dann doch zu beweisen war!