Heymann-Lowenstein Winery - A History and Tasting of German Reisling

Speaker 0 00:00:01 Welcome enthusiasts to another episode of wine and the bottle, or we grab a bottle from the seller and discuss the people, places, factors in history that led to the creation of that particular wine in that particular bottle. I'm your host, Sarah, uh, w set level three certified line education, enthusiastic. And today we've uncovered a 2016 wine glute Haman Rubinstein phone Blount Scheiffer reasoning. Oh, pardon? My pronunciation let's get started with the name phone Blount. Scheiffer translates roughly two of the blue slate referring to the soil type in the vineyard. These grapes come from a vineyard area of roughly one and a quarter acres or half a hectare where the top soil is composed of a dark gray blue clay-based substance. That isn't exactly rock, but it does have a similar appearance to slate. The story goes that the rich clay lends a striking minerality to the final wine. Speaker 0 00:01:10 Something Haman living Stein is revered for. And I guess we'll have to wait and see for ourselves in a few minutes. The vines in this vineyard average 45 years old, and that's a good thing as great finds age yields, start to decrease, which can concentrate flavor profiles and bring out strong variety of expression in the wine and old vine wines while not illegally regulated term are often revered in the wine community, old vine Riesling. Hmm. I'm getting more excited for this by the minute the vines here are planted on a steep south facing slope to allow for the best exposure to sunlight in the cool climate of Mozel Germany. The slopes are so steep that the grapes must be hand harvested and much care is taken to hand tending the vines. It's a dangerous environment. So the price of labor is high making Mozel wines often more expensive than wine from other regions in Germany, more on the price point a little bit later, ready for some background. Speaker 0 00:02:16 The Lovenstein family has been in the grape-growing business since the year 1520. Let's do some quick math that's 501 years of farming expertise passed down for generations, 14 generations to be exact, but they didn't always make wine. The Hayman Viven Stein winery was founded in 1980 by the 13th generation Reinhard and his wife, Cornelia Haman live in shine. Their daughter, Sarah is the current helm of operations. 98% of their production is a state grown reasoning in various styles, ranging from trucking or dry wine to truck and bear national ESSA, which roughly translates to hand selected dried berries. TBA, as it's also referred to is the sweetest level of German wine. But our reasoning today is dry. Moving on to vintage notes. The 2016 vintage in Germany had its challenges, but overall produced constantly high quality wine. The start of the growing season was wetter than usual. Speaker 0 00:03:32 Plus growers had to work around delayed flowering caused by a surprise hailstorm, but temperatures steadily warmed up during the summer. And the grapes were able to ripen reliably, the ones that survive the hailstorm. At least it was a great year for dry wines like this one, but sweet wine production. Usually a staple in Germany, unfortunately suffered. You can get German wine in the United States and plenty of it, but it is hard to come by Haman Levinstein. I was able to score my bottle from wine bid.com, not a sponsor for only about 12 us dollars in Germany. This same bottle goes for about 25 us dollars and elsewhere in Europe. It retails for about 55 us dollars. So I think I've got a great deal. The fun Blaume Scheiffer is the mid-level line for Haman live in Stein and premium wines from the same producer can easily sell for over $100 with the rarest of the rare a Rutkin throw can VR mouse Lisa reasoning currently available for over $300 United States currency per half bottle. Speaker 0 00:04:48 Okay, let's get to opening this wine. First of all, the bottle is beautiful. It has a tall narrow profile that immediately screams reasoning and the transparent green glass looks like something that would sit on a shelf in Dr. Frankenstein's office, especially contrast it against the thin black label with silver and red type face, right out of the bottle. I smell pronounced aromas of yellow, apple pear Tangerine, a hint of pineapple passion fruit. And of course that distinctive aged reasoning, kerosene smell. Oh, and Whetstone. I do get the striking minerality after all. Okay. So about that petrol smell. When I first started studying wine, the kerosene petrol things seemed disgusting. Like, why would you want to drink something that smells like your great uncles workshop that hasn't been aired out since 1965? But it's actually a very interesting and unique element. And I found that it's really only on the nose for me, at least it doesn't transfer the pallet, or maybe I'm just used to it by now. Speaker 0 00:06:03 So the appearance of this wine in the glass is pale yellow, almost vodka like, and on the palette, it has medium body with high acidity, lots of honey citrus and pineapple, and a medium plus finish. Not quite long. The acidity definitely outlasts the flavor and my mouth keeps watering forever. There's a slight oiliness that coats the mouth, which is also characteristic of her reasoning. So this wine has prominent fruit flavors, which can kind of skew the perception of sweetness. It is a dry wine, meaning no residual sugar from the fermentation process, but it still seems kind of sweet because of the fruit. This is a great example of an aromatic white wine. Most people would pair Riesling with fish like tilapia or Cod, but for this one, I would go more buttery and definitely avoid garlic because the bitterest stringency in the garlic is going to totally wipe out the fruit flavor. So lemon chicken, or lemon salmon, or a baby kale salad with poppy seed dressing. Oh, I'm just making myself hungry. The information for this particular episode came from the Hayman Divinci dine website, www.hl.wine, wine, searcher.com and a great article by a wine distributor soil air selection who also happened to import this particular wine. Thank you so much for joining me for this class of 2016, Haman Loewenstein with Blount Scheiffer Riesling and see you next week for the next deep dive into the cellar. I've been Sarah and this is wine and the bottle cheers.