Two Bottles Martin Müllen
To conclude this round of Rieslings, we're drawn back to the Mosel. We're drinking two Spätlese wines with two stars from Martin Müllen, one from Kröver Paradies and one from Kröver Letterlay. Both from 2017.
We conclude our small round of semi-aged Rieslings where we began, at the Mosel. This week, however, a few Mosel bends further towards Koblenz, namely around Kröv. If you look very closely at the picture above the article, you can spot two small golden spots relatively far to the left on the label. In real life and against the light, it’s much easier to find these spots and thus identify the vineyard where the grapes for the bottle’s contents were grown. As already mentioned, in this case it’s around Kröv. One of the two wines grows north of the river in the Kröver Letterlay with a view towards the south. The other bottle comes from more or less directly opposite, as much as “opposite” works in a river bend, from the Kröver Paradies and from a plot that belongs exclusively to the winery, here with a western orientation. The vines for both wines stand on slate. Both Rieslings are classified as Spätlese and made in a dry style. When Spätlese is on the bottle, the grapes must have a certain must weight, which means sugar content, and chaptalization (adding sugar) is not permitted. This was, of course, much more restrictive in the past than it has become nowadays in the wake of climate change.
Both wines were made by Martin Müllen, whom we featured very, very early in this blog with a bottle. Unlike many other winemakers, at the Müllens you can buy a gigantic range of already truly matured Rieslings directly from the winery, going back to the 1990s. And the range is extensive in other ways too, from Kabinett to Trockenbeerenauslese, everything is represented and often graded with one, two, or three stars. And Kabinett to Auslese are available from dry to sweet. I can imagine that this is a major marketing challenge. Our two bottles today, by the way, have two stars. The grapes grow on the steep slate slopes on single stakes, as was traditionally done on the Mosel. They are hand-picked, crushed, and then pressed with a basket press. Fermentation occurs spontaneously in wood where the wine also stays before disappearing into the bottle for possibly many, many years.
We start with the Spätlese from the Paradies. There’s yellow fruit, peach, mirabelle plum, and a slight maturity. Both in the fruit and in the wine itself. There’s something buttery in the nose that has almost certainly developed with the years that have already passed. And on the tongue, it does what Mosel Riesling does. It’s extremely juicy with lots of stone and simply an extreme amount of energy behind it. And way in the back, what was butter in the nose reappears as honey. Really far back, because the wine stays on the tongue for a very long time. The fruit has become even clearer after you’ve had two or three sips, and I really like that. With air, the honey becomes increasingly spicier, more towards pine honey, while at the same time the fruit becomes more and more radiant.
I imagine that the color of the wine seems a bit more golden on the second evening. Maybe that’s just imagination. I’m not good with colors anyway and stick to those I can identify without a doubt. Anyone who comes to me with salmon-colored or lilac-colored, well. But it actually does seem a bit more mature on this second evening. A bit more buttery, a bit sweeter in the nose. But this doesn’t detract from the radiance of the fruit and the stony minerality, because both are still present unchanged. Passion fruit acidity on the tongue, lemon, and stone. This is a nerd’s wine, if you want to make it one. But it’s also simply delicious. Effortlessly delicious.
The wine from the Kröver Letterlay feels completely different. There’s less fruit in the nose, and what it has is more exotic than pome fruit. There’s more herbal spice when smelling, and when drinking, the bitterness of citrus fruit peels settles on the tongue. It lacks a bit of the playful juiciness of its counterpart, which is compensated by somewhat more depth. After the first few sips, the gap between the two wines widens even further. The Letterlay is denser, spicier, much more compact, with more power, and the initially missing playful lightness becomes even more noticeable. The wine seems so serious in direct comparison. Is it the half percent more alcohol according to the label? I don’t think so. The wines benefit from distance. From each other, that is. If you let your tongue rest for a while and then first take a sip of Letterlay, it’s actually quite juicy too. This only disappears again when the Paradies has overwhelmed it. Such direct side-by-side drinking seems to do more harm than good here.
It’s even harder to grasp the wine a day later. It smells a bit like fruit that doesn’t smell like anything. Star fruit, for example, that direction. It reminds of fruit, but which one exactly, you don’t know, or at least I don’t know. There’s some toffee and still the herbs. The citrus bitterness in the middle of the tongue, the smoother acidity, the extra density, that’s really good. When it has distance and can work for itself, because right next to the Paradies, the wine still has no chance. And that doesn’t do it justice. So we give it the space it needs, and then it’s really a wonderful Mosel Riesling. And who knows, maybe in a few years this impression will turn completely in the opposite direction. Because whoever has the wines in their cellar, they’re under no time pressure.