Hard to find much Breuer in the US aside from Terra Montossa and Nonnenberg. A real pity
Their handling of Breuer and Kunstler drives me completely nuts.
The nonnenberg is my favorite one!
I’ve quite liked the Nonnenbergs I’ve had. I’ve only had Schlossberg twice and haven’t managed to try Roseneck and Rottland, so it’s tough to say what my favourite is. One thing I do know is that I wish I could find more of Theresa’s wines.
Thinking mostly of Schlossberg. The prices are much higher in Germany, especially at auction.
You don’t think GG and Spatburgunder prices are driven largely by domestic demand?
Old vintages yes! New releases are easy enough if you buy bundles with the ‘estate’ wines.
Let me know if you need pointers.
Bürklin-Wolf? Not some high end reds?
Leitz Rottland is one of my favorite wines.
Leitz is a producer that’s hasn’t been on my radar much. Will have to seek some out to rectify that to get a sense of the wines
I do not think so on GGs. Most GGs are 2-3x here than in Germany. And Spatburgunder is an odd category for something like Wasenhaus which is the hottest new Spatburgunder producer the U.S. is definitely driving the price and demand.
Since it’s rare to find a Spatburgunder in the US, I find it hard to think the American market drives the prices for them as a general matter.
As for what drives the pricing of GG’s, here’s David Schildknecht writing in 2016:
While there are huge disparities among growers, the small quantities of Grosse Gewächse rendered by most participating estates, combined with the marketing strategy pursued by the VDP, has rendered me skeptical of these wines’ ability to fulfill their stated role as international ambassadors for their great vineyards and for German Riesling and its finest terroirs as a whole.
a. > Marketing as well as pricing continues to be dominated by the domestic market where the vast majority of Grosse Gewächse are sold, and the degree to which “Grosses Gewächs” serves in actual practice as an über-Prädikat sought by wealthy consumers as a status symbol is, I strongly suspect, unlikely to carry over to export markets, even in instances where there is enough wine to go around. > (Strange but true: Some Grosse Gewächse are sold exclusively to a single German merchant, retail chain, or even restaurant group, and if you ask their growers why, they will tell you it’s because, first, the quantities are small; and second, this makes marketing their entire line simpler. Now I ask you, do these sound like the arguments of someone anxious to demonstrate to and share with the wine lovers around the world the quality and distinctiveness of great vineyards in which he or she is often one of only a handful of landholders? Try to imagine how it could possibly benefit Robert Chevillon’s reputation, in Nuits Saint Georges, if you could buy six of his eight crus on the open market but Bousselots and Pruliers were tied up with a single French retail or restaurant chain because, he explained to you, the acreage is smaller and anyway six is already a lot to deal with.) Many German estates allot to each export market “its” particular Grosses Gewächs, so that precisely the sort of taste comparison that would serve to demonstrate the efficacy of and Riesling’s sensitivity to terroir is rendered unlikely.
I’m thankful that friends poured Egon Muller for me even when I had no idea of what their relative status was vs. other German riesling!
Back in the day, Laura and I drank through several bottles of the 1997 Egon Muller Kabinett at a local restaurant. It was $20 on the list.
Ever had the 1999 auction Kabinett? I have a singleton of that.
The 1979 Egon Muller Scharzhofberger Auslese that a friend shared with me last year was profound and memorable.
Chances are good that it’s the only time I’ll get to experience wine from this producer.
There are still several bottles only a few miles from Manchester.
Sure, but not the ones that get the most attention (other than Keller, which has a different market than any others). And where there are discrepancies, it doesn’t mean the producers are selling for less money in Germany. It’s a LOT easier to sell there than deal with US importers. I’ve always been told it’s the demand in Germany that makes the wines so expensive here, and that the top producers could sell their entire production, or very close to it, domestically if they wanted to. Do you not think that’s true?
So there are Wasenhaus and Enderele & Moll, which have built quite a bit of hype in the US, but they wouldn’t have been able to do that if it weren’t for the likes of Fürst, Kesseler, Meyer-Näkel, etc., whose pricing and demand have been very high for a while, with very little availability in the US. Don’t the Germans drink far more red wine than they produce, and hasn’t that been the case for quite a while? I realize a lot of that is cheap wine, but like above, I’ve always been told the demand in country for high end Spätburgunder has driven the market. I don’t understand claiming otherwise based on 1 or 2 exceptions.
Maybe you can explain a bit more why you disagree with this common narrative in both cases. You probably know more about the market for German wines than I do, which makes me very surprised to see these comments, as they contradict what I’ve always heard from some of the most knowledgeable people.
Just a reminder that price and perceived quality do not move in a 1:1 ratio. People are willing to pay significantly more for “the best” so, for example, a perceived 10% increase in quality could translate to a 500% price increase.
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Echoing Jay above, >50% of qpr threads are answered by log utility functions even though it is fun to debate the idiosyncratic merits.
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