Huxelrebe - Rheinhessen, Germany

I love German wines.  To be truthful, I love wines from pretty much anywhere, but I have a particular soft spot in my heart for the wines of Germany.  Riesling is my absolute favorite grape and I don't believe that any other country or region can match the range and depth of Rieslings from Germany.  Unfortunately, it seems that in the United States, the Riesling grape has become so entwined with the image of German wines that it is nearly impossible to find wines from Germany made from any other grape.  As I mentioned in my post on Kerner (which was bred in Germany but the only bottles I could find were from Italy), Riesling accounts for only around 20% of the total planting area of Germany, but it seems to occupy 95% of the shelf space devoted to German wines in American wine shops.  German Pinot Noir (red and white) is becoming more common and you can occasionally find something like Scheurebe, Dornfelder, Kanzler or Silvaner if you look long enough, but if you come across a bottle of wine from Germany in your local shop, odds are really good that it's a Riesling.

Which is kind of a shame, because there are a lot of interesting, unique grapes being grown in Germany.  As I mentioned in my post on Scheurebe, many of the unique grapes being grown in Germany are actually crossings that were bred at one of the many viticultural institutions located throughout that country.  In places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, the climate is particularly suited to the cultivation of the vine and so many different varieties have been grown in those countries through the years.  Many of Germany's wine growing regions are not quite as favorable as those in areas further south so few grape species have really thrived there.  Over the past hundred years or so, many German viticulturalists have focused their energies on developing new grape varieties that can withstand the harsher conditions of some of these regions.  The German people are also an efficient lot, so another aim of their grape breeding programs was to create high yielding vines that also produced high quality wine.  While they have been fairly successful in overcoming many of their climatic issues through grape breeding, their search for an explosively yielding vine that produces high quality wine has thus far not been, ahem, fruitful.

One of the more well known German grape breeders was a man named Georg Scheu.  Scheu (1879 - 1949) studied horticulture in the early 1900's and in 1909, he went to the institute at Alzey, where he remained until 1947, to study viticulture.  In 1929, he discovered how leaf-roll disease was transmitted between vines (though the virus that is the underlying cause was not discovered until 1966) and initiated efforts to create clean, virus free vine stocks in nurseries and holding institutions.  Though Scheu was an accomplished scientist and viticulturalist, most wine drinkers know him today, if they know him at all, from the grapes that he bred during his time in Alzey.  The Scheurebe grape is his namesake variety and is the most well known of his creations, but he also created the Kanzler grape mentioned above as well as Siegerrebe, Faber and Regner.  The grape we're interested in today, though, is one of his creations called Huxelrebe.

Huxelrebe was created in 1927 by crossing Chasselas with a grape called Muscat Précoce de Saumur.  Here's how we got Muscat Précoce de Saumur: a Pinot Noir vine mutated into Pinot Noir Précoce (Frühburgunder to you Germans in the crowd) which gets its name from the fact that it ripens two weeks earlier than regular Pinot Noir, and that mutation was propagated, and then one of those mutated vines was self-pollinated and one of the resulting seeds (which is genetically very similar to but still distinct from Pinot Noir Précoce) was planted and grew into Muscat Précoce de Saumur.  I have no idea if there is even a word for the kind of relationship that Huxelrebe therefore has to Pinot Noir, but it's kind of fun to think about.  Huxelrebe was originally known as Alzey S 3962, but was later named for Fritz Huxel, a Germany nurseryman who first brought the grape to prominence in the 1950's.  Huxelrebe is a prolific yielder that is also capable of very high sugar levels which, along with its susceptibility to botrytis infection, makes it a natural choice for sweet wine production.  It is grown on about 635 hectares in Germany (just over 1500 acres) and about 25 hectares (60 acres) in the UK, but those numbers have been declining in recent years.  Though it is a high-yielding variety, its aroma and flavor profile are quite assertive and this seems to have tempered most people's enthusiasm for it as a fine wine grape.

Recently I was able to find a half bottle of the 2008 Gysler Huxelrebe Beerenauslese from my friends at the Wine Bottega for around $35.  In the glass the wine was a fairly light lemon gold color.  The nose was intense with smoky, funky aromas of orange marmalade, orange peel, honey and dried apricot. On the palate the wine was full bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was very sweet with flavors of honey, orange creme, orange marmalade, and dried apricot.  The wine was very well balanced and was a real delight to drink, though the nose smelled really odd and funky.  It wasn't as complex as BA Riesling, but what it lacked in complexity, it certainly made up for in power with deep, intense pure citrus and stone fruit flavors.  I had some duck foie gras pate in my refrigerator and this wine complemented it very nicely.  It's not exactly a value wine, but I felt that the quality lined up pretty nicely with the price on it.  I'd be interested in trying a table wine made from this grape, but suspect I'll be hard pressed to find one anytime soon.

Kanzler - Rheinhessen, Germany

I just spent my entire afternoon writing a post about a wine I recently tried, and right at the very end, I discovered that the grape in the wine wasn't what I had originally thought.  It's ultimately OK because the grape turns out to be Kanzler, which is also pretty unusual, but it means that the several hours of work I put into the original post is now kind of useless.

The confusion all started because the name of the wine that I tried was "The Chancellor," which both I and the shop that I bought the wine from thought was a reference to the Chancellor grape, which was going to be the subject of today's post, but will instead have to be relegated to a future post since the angle that I was trying to work was dependent on this particular wine being made from that grape.  See, Chancellor is a red berried grape, while this particular wine is white.  I remember this giving me pause while in the store, but since I've had several other white wines made from red grapes (specifically Cabernet Franc and Tempranillo), I shrugged it off.  The piece I was writing was all about the fact that the two wines that I had from this grape were made in extremely different styles, since the other Chancellor based wine that I had was a fortified, red, port-style wine.  I thought it was really cool that a single variety could be responsible for such different wines and I wrote and thought about it at some length.

As I was approaching the end of the piece, though, another nagging doubt that I had at the store began to surface again.  Today's wine is made in Germany and the Chancellor grape is a hybrid.  It has always been my understanding that the EU does not allow hybrid grapes to be used in the production of quality wines (meaning essentially wines above the level of "table wine" in all its various guises throughout the different countries).  I was never able to find specific legislation on this, but it's because the law isn't written negatively, meaning that it doesn't specifically ban wines made from hybrid grapes, but rather only allows for wines made from vinifera grapes*.  The Oxford Companion to Wine points out that there are a few exceptions for vines like Rondo, Regent, Phoenix and Orion, though, so I wasn't totally sure what the situation was with the Chancellor grape.

I decided to try to see whether the winery's website could clarify the situation, but it didn't look like the winery actually had a website.  Google searches were coming up empty until I finally found this page from what I believe is one of the distributors in the US.  On that page, whoever the author is indicates that they tasted this wine at the estate, where it was called Trivini, or "three grapes."  Since there were apparently other wines available in the US with similar names, the winery was persuaded to rename this one "The Chancellor," after the grape that comprises the bulk of it, Kanzler (the other two grapes are Riesling and Kerner).

So rather than a post about Chancellor, you're getting a post about the Kanzler grape and how I became aware of its existence just a few hours ago.  The grape itself is a German crossing that was bred at one of their research stations in a town called Alzey in 1927.  Its parents, like an awful lot of other German crossings, are Müller Thurgau and Sylvaner.  It was once somewhat popular among growers because of the high must weights that it was able to generate, which is a big deal since must weight determines the quality level of German wines.  The theory is that riper grapes have more sugar and are thus heavier than less ripe grapes, and since the Germans believe that riper grapes equal better wines, the heavier the musts, the higher your quality rating.  The biggest problem Kanzler had, though, was that it was a poor yielder, so while it gave with one hand, it took away with the other, and ultimately fell out of favor with those growers who were looking for a cash crop.  It is grown sparingly only in Germany (as far as I know) and almost exclusively in the Rheinhessen region.

Which brings us to today's wine, the 2009 Schäfer "The Chancellor," which I picked up from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $11.  In the glass this wine was a medium silvery lemon color with greenish tints.  The nose was moderately aromatic with green apple and pear and a hint of grapey-ness.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of green apple and apple candy along with some pineapple and lime.  The wine was dry with a touch of something bitter on the finish.  The fruit flavors were bright and tart and overall I found this wine pretty enjoyable.  It had a bit of muscat-like grapey-ness throughout the nose and the palate that I found very appealing.  Fans of aromatic white wines with nice acidity will find a lot to like here.

*"According to regulation (EC) No. 1493/1999, article 19, paragraph 3, the production of quality wine in EU countries is only allowed from varieties which belong to the species Vitis vinifera." (source)

Dornfelder - Rheinhessen, Germany and Finger Lakes, NY, USA

On the grand stage of wine, Dornfelder is a relative newcomer.  We know this because we know exactly when it came into being and exactly what its parents were.  Unlike most vines that are propagated today, Dornfelder was created in a lab and is not the result of chance coupled with selective cloning. It's still considered a vinifera grape, as its parents and all of its ancestors are vinifera grapes, which is actually more important than whether it was created in nature or in a lab.  Technically speaking, all of the vinifera grapes that are made into wine are crossings, it's just that most of them happened in nature rather than in a lab setting. 

As mentioned in my posts on Scheurebe and Kerner, German wine production areas are located in marginal climate zones and they have some difficulty getting grapes to ripen fully in many areas of the country.  To combat that problem, the Germans created several research institutes whose aim was to develop new grapes through crossings and hybridization that would be better suited to some of the more extreme climactic conditions in some areas of Germany (there's a similar situation in New York at Cornell University).  The process isn't simple and it can take several decades for a new crossing to go through the testing and approval process prior to release.  Dornfelder, for instance, was created in 1956 by crossing Helfensteiner (itself a cross between Frühburgunder, a small-berried mutation of Pinot Noir, and Trollinger, also known as Schiava) and Heroldrebe (a cross between Portugieser and Lemberger), but it wasn't approved for cultivation until 1979.  It is said that Dornfelder has some DNA trace of every red wine grape grown in Germany due to its breeding history.  Dr. August Herold was its creator and, unfortunately for Herold, he lent his own name to another of his creations, Heroldrebe, which has never really taken off (there are about 200 ha under vine in Germany).  Dornfelder was named for August Ludwig Dornfeld who was one of the key figures in establishing the viticultural school in Weinsberg, Germany, where Dornfelder was created.

In its short existence, Dornfelder has really taken hold of the German wine world.  It is currently second in vineyard area for red grapes, behind only Pinot Noir (here called Spätburgunder).  It's a hardy grape, resistant to many vineyard diseases and it is capable of extremely high yields, but the main reason for its popularity in the vineyards of Germany is its deep coloring.  Up until 1971, German wine makers were allowed to add juice from outside of Germany to give their red wines some extra color.  Many of the red grapes grown in Germany are either naturally low in pigment or cannot get ripe enough in the German climate in order to provide deep coloration for the wines.  Once the law was rewritten to ban this practice, Dornfelder became very important as it is capable of producing deep color and achieving higher ripeness levels than Portugieser or Schiava.  It also doesn't hurt that the juice from the grapes is capable of making pretty decent wine, a claim that very few of the crossings or hybrids produced in the German research institutes (or anywhere else for that matter) can make.

I was able to try two different Dornfelder wines, one from its native Germany and one from the Finger Lakes region of New York.  The first wine I tried was a 2007 Georg Albrecht Schneider Dornfelder from the Rheinhessen region of Germany.  I paid about $10 for this wine at Curtis Liquors.  In the glass, the wine was a dense, opaque ruby-purple color.  The nose was pretty simple with spicy sour cherry and juicy red fruit.  On the palate, the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity and soft tannins.  Juicy is a word that keeps popping in my review, as the palate was characterized by juicy red fruit with cherry and some blackberry flavors.  This was pretty much all fruit which, it turns out, is one of the hallmarks of wines made from Dornfelder.  It's not a grape that's going to knock you out with incredible depth or complexity, but it is going to give you a nice, fruity drink.  Think Beaujolais with a bit more richness and you'll be on the right track.  There are producers who are seriously cutting down their yields and aging these wines in oak barrels in an attempt to make a more serious style of wine, but I've not been able to try any of them and frankly, I'm not sure if it's really that necessary.  The world is full of painfully serious wines and sometimes you just want something soft and fruity.

The next wine I tried was from Fulkerson Winery on Seneca Lake in New York State.  It was their 2008 Dornfelder bottling and I picked it up at the winery for $12.  The market this as a Beaujolais style wine, but I'm not sure what the production method for it is.  I suspect part of it is done with carbonic maceration, but I wouldn't swear to it.  They are also one of only two producers growing Dornfelder and are the only producer to produce a varietal bottling (according to their website).  The Finger Lakes has such great success with Riesling that I was very curious to see if that would translate to success with a German red as well.  In the glass, the wine had medium saturation with a ruby core fading to a lavender rim.  It was pretty light as far as Dornfelder usually goes.  The nose was shy with some red cherry and a kind of bubble gum aroma .  On the palate, the wine was light to medium bodied with acidity on the higher side of medium, which is pretty surprising as Dornfelder is typically known for its low acidity.  At this point, I'm starting to seriously wonder about the ripeness level of the grapes being used for this wine as the color doesn't seem fully developed, the palate was a little thin and the acidity really seemed out of whack.  There was some red cherry fruit here and a bit of spicy plum but it also had kind of a tinny, metallic taste.  It's a hard wine to recommend, which is a shame, because I feel like the grape itself may have some potential in this region.  Fulkerson is not exactly at the forefront of quality wine production in the Finger Lakes, so their effort is certainly not indicative of what the grape can potentially do there.  I'd definitely like to see someone else in the region give it a shot, though, as it's an enjoyable wine that can be made in a difficult climate.

For anyone interested, I recently wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Cork Report that dealt specifically with grape selection in that region.  You can check it out here.