487: Dominik Sona and a Conception of Kabinett

[00:00:00] Ill Drink to That where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business. Im Levi Dalton, Im Erin Scala and here is our show today. Dominic Sona has managed Cola Ruprecht since 2010 and under his watch that winery left the grower association known as the VDP in 2014.

[00:00:37] Sona discusses the reasons for that decision in the interview coming up, but he doesn't touch on what it can mean to be a part of the VDP. And for a sense of that, it is worth recalling what Florian Lauer of Peterlauer revealed

[00:00:52] about the long process of joining the VDP chapter in the Tsar. I must say the membership in the VDP is a hard and very, very long process to get a member of the VDP. At least the VDP Mosul, Zaharova is really, yeah, is a hard nut.

[00:01:17] That took nearly six, seven years for them to come to a result. They lost your paperwork maybe. Yeah, I hope so. The point is they really think a lot about their new members.

[00:01:37] They observe you, they talk to you, they come to you making tastings, seeing who is that person who likes to join us. And also new membership is always something new for the club and it's something new for the wine estate.

[00:01:54] It's something that the wine estate has to be able to modify and to adapt his production portfolio to the VDP system. Let's say also to these VDP prices, it's not secret that a lot of VDP members have some expensive wines.

[00:02:13] And we had been really happy when in 2012, end of 2012, beginning of 2013, we got the message, hey, you are accepted. That was a long process, but I think we fit into that club very well.

[00:02:33] I'm really, I'm very happy being part of that very, very traditional club with its absolutely fantastic winemakers. Lauer described a group that can be difficult to join, but which brings prestige through association with other top wineries.

[00:02:51] And he also referenced individual wineries adapting their production to the VDP system. And that lies at the root of why Kolaruprecht, which had originally joined the precursor of the VDP back in the 1920s would end up leaving the VDP.

[00:03:09] Guidelines that were introduced by the VDP in 2012 wouldn't allow for the kind of wines Kolaruprecht had already been making for decades. And there was also a clash about how those wines could be labeled. The group wanted one way and Kolaruprecht preferred another.

[00:03:27] But why were the preferences of the group important at all? Well, because the VDP is the ready alternative to industrialization and low standards in German wine, against which the VDP group has acted as a historical counterweight.

[00:03:44] The VDP is and was associated with fine German wine, the wine that specifically is not Liebfraumilch. And not being Liebfraumilch, which at one time, Liebfraumilch was very commercially successful, not being Liebfraumilch has had its own hazards and rewards.

[00:04:03] Johannes Sobock of Sobock Oester discussed the situation for German wines in the mid and late 1980s in this way. With many things, if you eat too much of one thing or drink too much of one thing, people get bored.

[00:04:16] And I think it was time for German wines also for renewal. And that renewal came with a big bang because we had a couple of scandals in Germany and that coincided with Bartels and James. And you remember this rocking chair? I do. Thank you for your support. Right.

[00:04:33] And then came Weiz Infandel. And between those three things, German wines really fell out of favor or people just moved on to other things and they thought they knew what German wines were like.

[00:04:45] At the time, you may remember there was two big brands for Liebfraumilch and there was a lot of Me Too's and maybe there was a little bit too much of one kind of wine and people had had enough.

[00:04:57] Obviously, there was also high quality wine, estate wines, but that was the tip of the iceberg. And that was what was on the shelf by and large around the wine list. So the market drained to a very low level.

[00:05:11] German wines in the mid 80s were something that people who were in the know drank, but the vast majority shunned. They thought they're all the same, they all taste sweet and one dimensional. And so it was like a purge, like a cleansing.

[00:05:26] So we saw quite a change in the industry. A lot of the big players dropped out. Many wineries didn't have successors, many growers didn't have successors because the younger generations said forget it, it's hard work and it's not giving me enough return on investment.

[00:05:43] So we had a structural change in Germany. The acreage shrunk, the number of players shrunk. Zellbach describes a world market that had tired of Liebfraumilch, the wine style that had previously been commercially dominant for Germany, and then a steep decline in interest

[00:05:59] for German and Austrian wine in general following the Glycol scandal of 1985, as well as tough times for the German producers who were working for higher quality. The Germans making fine wine needed the organization of the VDP to confer some prestige by association

[00:06:17] and to separate their wines from the big swath of Liebfraumilch junk. And thus the VDP became especially important. But to take a step back, how did that situation that Zellbach described actually come to be?

[00:06:32] I mean what, aside from the desire to make a profit, caused the industrial production of German wines to become so prevalent that it actually obscured the wines of the higher quality producers? And one argument here is that the German Wine Law of 1971, which fused German wine standards

[00:06:49] with the laws of the European community, gave an upper hand to the industrial wine producers within Germany. The 1971 law didn't limit yields and didn't much distinguish between single vineyards and large groupings of vineyards under one name.

[00:07:07] It also allowed for the capitalization of some wines, and Egon Muller of the Scharzov winery recalled his family's resistance to the 1971 law, as well as the changes that that law brought along with it.

[00:07:21] I was 12 years old when the famous 1971 wine law was passed, and I still remember how my father was up against it. Probably the biggest failure of the 1971 wine law is that it muddled the distinction between

[00:07:48] capitalized wines where sugar is added before fermentation in order to increase the alcoholic strength of the wine, and the traditional natural wines as we called them, where it was strictly forbidden to add sugar. And those were the wines that have made Germany great 100 years ago.

[00:08:11] The wines with no added sugar? The wines with no added sugar. It was a decision that the growers at that time took, knowing that they would have to sacrifice in many years, because not every vintage was by itself ripe enough to be bottled non-capitalized.

[00:08:32] But they knew that the great vintages would be even greater without sugar added, and they made a big, big sacrifice to completely forego capitalization. And 100 years ago, an estate like ours was not even allowed to make capitalized wine, to capitalize wine in their own cellars.

[00:08:57] And my grandfather and my father sold many vintages in bulk because the wines were simply not ripe enough. And after 1971, that distinction was muddled. And I think today we are getting to a point where it becomes more and more obsolete, perhaps,

[00:09:23] and where sometimes the consumers are not even asked anymore what they want. And by not talking about it, the consumers often forget that they have a choice. The 1971 law had effects that changed the landscape of German wine quite literally in

[00:09:45] that some vineyard names disappeared or were obscured into larger vineyard groupings. In response, the VDP attempted to bring recognition to top vineyards and to impose limits on yields. But the allowance for capitalization that was permitted for some wines in the 1971 law was also allowed by the VDP.

[00:10:06] And that stance on capitalization would eventually lead, drama alert, to the disagreement between the Kohler Ruprecht Winery and the VDP chapter in the falls. I talk to winemakers all the time, and something they tell me is that oxygen management is a key to aging wine.

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[00:11:29] That's DiEM-closures with an S dot com forward slash IDTT for more information. Dominik Sona of Kolar Ruprecht. He's the general manager at that winery in the falls. Hello, sir. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Very nice to see you. Good to see you as well.

[00:12:05] So you're originally from the falls, right? Yes, I am. Yes, I am. I'm born and raised in a town called Speyer, which is on the Rhine River. It's actually one of the oldest wine growing areas in falls.

[00:12:14] And the oldest bottle still alive, about 1800 years old or 2000 years old is found there. My dad is from a village called St. Martin and that's a wine growing area. And the family has a vineyard in that village for 350 years. So it's a little bit in my blood.

[00:12:31] And February of six, I finished Geisenheim and I came back and now seven. I didn't actually, I did know what to do. I focused on my own vineyard, but it's only like two acres. So I can't live of it.

[00:12:45] And after harvest, I went to see the manager at the Tailwolf, Centermaster Tailwolf, which is Ernie Lewson's Falls Project. And they were actually looking for a vineyard manager. And I was like, well, you know, I do have enough time to do that, like four days a week.

[00:13:02] And one day a week I can do focus on my own stuff and sign the contract. And from then on, it was a lot of fun working at Tailwolf. Didn't someone have a coma there? Yeah.

[00:13:13] Well, that's a master who came in after the one who kind of hired me. He had a coma right before harvest in 08, which was a little bit of a stressful time. So it's been like two weeks before harvest. No one was around.

[00:13:27] Well, there were two interns from New Zealand, which was good to have those guys. And I was like in a little bit of a complicated situation since, you know, this guy fell into

[00:13:37] coma and then, well, I know how to do the cellar work and now, you know, just couldn't find someone else to do it. So I decided to, well, of course I can do the harvest stuff.

[00:13:49] I just don't like the cellar work as much as I like the vineyard work. But that's how I jumped into the cold water and did the harvest in 08 for Tailwolf. So it turned out pretty good, actually. 08 was a really good vintage. Higher acidity, good minerality.

[00:14:05] And it's been a massive harvest. It's been a really big harvest. Good but busy. And then Ernie came after harvest and he was like, hey Dom, that's the smoothest harvest I've ever had. Dominic, we will not hire someone else. You can do both, right?

[00:14:22] So I was caught in it and liked it. Yeah, good guy. Ernie is a really good guy. I learned a lot from him and, you know, it's been a really good time. It's a very nice property too and there were a couple of really good vineyards as well.

[00:14:35] So I learned a lot on the winemaking side there. What are specifics about that? What are things you learned specifically? It is a huge winery, right? So I did learn how to handle a couple of thousand liters of juice at a time.

[00:14:51] And some wines, you know that they will need to end up with 25 grams of sugar, of RS, and you kind of need to focus on those numbers. And that's something you learn in a situation like that.

[00:15:05] Well, in theory, you know all that, but not two years after Geisenheim. I've always worked harvest, but never had the responsibility of being responsible for, I don't know, 300,000 bottles. When you got another opportunity, you went back to Ernie and kind of said, hey, what do you think, right?

[00:15:26] Yeah, exactly. So in April 2009, the Sauvage family, Alan Sauvage called me and we were chatting about Koehler-Oberrecht. And I was not sure what I should do because I liked a lot working with Ernie and working at JL Wolf.

[00:15:44] So I talked to Ernie about it and he was like, oh, Dom, so you should do that. You should leave JL Wolf and go to KR. That's a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I cannot guarantee you that I will do JL Wolf forever.

[00:15:59] He told me to, well, not leave, but he told me to take the opportunity and take the job at KR, which at the end of the day made sense. And I actually like it a lot.

[00:16:13] And it's good that Ernie was honest enough to tell me you can go. We're still friends, we shake hands, we chat and have a glass of wine. So it's not like being grumpy that I leave. What was the situation at Koehler-Oberrecht when you got there?

[00:16:29] I started on paper on January 1st, 2010. And the situation was that half a year before that, Alan Savage bought the estate from Bernd Philippe and Bernd Philippe was about to more or less retire.

[00:16:44] So he had a consulting job at Koehler-Oberrecht for another two and a half years maybe. So I basically jumped in as GM together with Bernd Philippe at the beginning. And the plan was that he will retire after a year or two.

[00:16:58] So I came in and January, which is a quiet month, harvest was over. And yeah, it took me a little while to get warm with the situation, with the new buildings, with a new cellar, with the new winemaking theories too as well.

[00:17:16] It's all hands off in comparison to Geelwolf. What was the history of Koehler-Oberrecht? Yeah, it is one of the older places in Pfalz. There's an old cellar building, which is from 1500 something. And the Ruprecht family actually came down to Pfalz after the 30 year war.

[00:17:34] And that's when I think the Duke of Pfalz called people from outside, gave them land to resettle the country. So that's when the winery started. And in early 1900, that's when Mr. Koehler joined the family. And he was Bernd Philippe's grandfather actually.

[00:17:56] So he was the one joining the natural wine auctioneers, which is now the VDP. And he was the one who was kind of driving up the estate, being famous for wine, mainly sweet wine back in the days.

[00:18:11] And he was the one focusing more on wine than on agriculture. And after that, Bernd's father Otto Philippe, he was the next guy, Geisner and Prenny as well. He was focusing a little bit more on the dry wines then.

[00:18:26] And late 80s, early 90s, Bernd Philippe joined the winery until 2009 when he sold the place. And he was big into dry wine, right? Yes, one of the pioneers for dry wine, dry Riesling for Pfalz for sure, yeah.

[00:18:40] Did Bernd ever tell you why he decided to focus so heavily on dry wine when it wasn't something his grandfather had done? I think it just did what he liked to drink, right? So he liked to drink dry Riesling and that's what he did.

[00:18:53] And he did make sweet wines too, but not as much as in the past. Also I mean, their sweet wines from Pfalz were not in fashion anymore. So there was a reason to focus a little bit more on dry wine. Oh, I see.

[00:19:07] And he used to age in large wood, right? Yes, well, large is not a good expression actually. It's old wood, right? So what we do is all barrels and the oldest barrel is about 120 years old. The newest we use for Riesling is about 40 years old.

[00:19:26] The biggest size is 6,000 liters. The smallest is 240 liters, but it's all oval shaped, all like thick staves and neutral barrels. The barrels are bent over steam and not over fire. So that's why we cannot really talk about an oaked Riesling, but it's actually fermented in oak, right?

[00:19:49] So that's what the winery always did. So we're the last and the first one in Pfalz to do that. It would have been German wood or? Yes. It's mainly oak from the Pfalz forest and there are a few barrels, which is chestnut,

[00:20:05] but that's only because chestnut was a little cheaper back in the days, but there's no difference in taste, not at all. Sometimes people would say that Burns wines had a hint of volatility, like in the aromatics, a little bit apple stuff going on.

[00:20:19] Well, that is maybe because of a long lease contact. I mean, we have the wines on the lease for nine months, 10 months, sometimes 15 months and the oval shaped barrels, they stand for a long lease and suspension. So the lease doesn't settle as fast, which is good.

[00:20:37] So the wine is longer in contact with a fine lease. So there's a volatility maybe, but volatility is a nice word with many meanings, but I would more think that is from the lease contact and also the air influence from that oak, from the wood, right?

[00:20:56] It's not like stainless steel, it's not sealed. It's naturally air influenced, but the wine at the end is not oxidized. When you ferment the wine, it's fermented in wood and is that closed top or open top? Closed. Closed, right. So it's not really oxidative.

[00:21:13] I would agree on that, yeah. But there's always a little talk about that, but it's air influenced, let's put it this way. But actually you guys do very little racking. Yes, that is true. We do rack basically two weeks before bottling.

[00:21:28] We believe that the lease gives us a little bit more backbone for the wines and at the same time it protects it from oxygen, right? And we will need a little bit less sulfur hopefully.

[00:21:40] So when the grapes come in, you guys use whole cluster or do you take the stems out or? We do crush basically all we get in and then they are overnight on the skins, usually one night, maybe a little longer.

[00:21:55] Then we press them off, put them in a stainless steel tank at that point and then we'll let the solid settle for about two days, three days and then we drain the juice into the

[00:22:07] barrels and that's all by gravity and then we just wait until fermentation kicks off. You're a fan of native yeast? Yes, of course. I mean that's part of the vintage, right? And part of our philosophy.

[00:22:21] The diversity you get from native yeast is uncomparable to yeast out of the pack. So after alcoholic and then maybe mallow? Yeah, maybe mallow. So that is a, mallow is another word we don't really look for.

[00:22:38] We don't look for mallow in wine but if it's happening and barrel does happen, then we don't stop it, right? We don't inoculate it and usually it doesn't happen. We pick ripe so there's not much malic acid left to convert into lactic. But that's what we do.

[00:22:53] We do wait until the fermentation is over and then we'll still let it on the lees, like I said right before bottling. So that's about a year? Yes, true. Without wracking? True, that's what it is. I mean that's somewhat unusual, right? It is, it is.

[00:23:08] These days it is. Back like 100 years ago, 80 years ago it was standard but for us it is standard now, yeah. Can you think of a lot of people in Germany who make wine in that fashion? In Pfalz I don't think so.

[00:23:22] There's always some barrels in some wineries but 100% that method, we're the only ones. All over Germany I don't know, maybe there are a few more in the Mosel, maybe some in Rheinhessen and some in the Rheingo, but in Pfalz we're the only one, yeah.

[00:23:37] Because it reminds me somewhat of Becker, JB Becker. Yeah, that's true. JB Becker is a winery many people compare our wines to, like that old school, old fashioned Riesling style. And you guys actually label with Prodicates which is unusual for dry wines. Well, unusual these days.

[00:23:57] We are very proud of that and that's actually one of the reasons we left the VDP in 2014 which was a big deal for all of us I think and hopefully for the VDP as well.

[00:24:10] Like I told you before, Mr. Köhler joined the natural wine auctioneers and they were founded because they don't want to chapitalize wine. They were very proud of that, that they don't capitalize and they work with nature.

[00:24:26] So we label everything with a predicate to guarantee the customer that the wine did not get chapitalized. I can always tell you that the wine is not chapitalized but I'm not right next to the customer when he buys the wine.

[00:24:39] So we put the predicate on there to guarantee the customer that this wine is not chapitalized. And if it's a cabinet, a spätlese or an auslese, that's something we define on the wine style these days, not necessarily on the numbers anymore.

[00:24:53] So the cabinet for us is the lightest wine by taste, the spätlese is the most elegant and the auslese trocken is the most complex. And that is 100% of our wines which is Predicates wine.

[00:25:05] These days when natural wine is back on a little bit of a movement, we should use the tools you have by law, which is the Predicates wine system in that case, to show it on the label that this is as natural in my eyes as it can get.

[00:25:20] Because a lot of the people who make dry German Riesling do it as a QBA and the law says you can chapitalize a QBA. You are allowed to. You don't have to, that's something which needs to be said, but you can, yes.

[00:25:34] And you guys don't and you don't want to be a part of that. Exactly. And so it was kind of a big deal, right? That was a big deal and the other reason I have to tell you, it's not only the one reason,

[00:25:43] the other reason was that the new regulations with the TG says that there's only one dry wine out of a single vineyard, the TG vineyard, the Kroselager, which would in our case be the Sauermargen vineyard.

[00:25:58] And we believe that our grade site can give us more than one grade wine. So we still continue making a cabinet, a Spätlese and an Auslese and sometimes an R, which is

[00:26:09] our version of a reserve or a double R out of this one vineyard in one vintage. It shows us the diversity of the vineyard taste-wise, but also you can taste in the cabinet that it's from the grade site Sauermargen.

[00:26:25] The wine is lighter by taste, but it's still from the Sauermargen. You can taste that. That is important in our eyes and there's only one wine takes the fun out of it, right? So if we're good, we can do seven different dry wines out of that vineyard.

[00:26:42] It is complicated. I know that. The GG system is a little bit easier to understand, I think, for an average customer, but we make wine for maybe one and a half percent of the wine drinkers and people who want to drink

[00:26:56] our wine, they will be ready to read about it, to do the research. And sometimes if things are complicated, it's attractive as well. When you label Cabernet, Spätlese, Auslese, Sertrakens, you're basing that on having tasted the wine, not on the sugar readings or the harvest time.

[00:27:15] Yes, in general, yes. Climate change, which is happening, gives us the opportunity to usually pick everything on 90% at an Auslese level and we can always downgrade, right? That is a good idea of the law. We cannot upgrade, never ever.

[00:27:34] So if we pick something at a Cabernet level, it's always be Cabernet. It'll never be a Spätlese. So that's something we have to realize and accept. But if I do a 90% Auslese, I have different pickings in the vineyard, different qualities

[00:27:50] in the vineyard, and then I have different barrels. And if it's an Auslese on paper, it doesn't need to be an Auslese in the mouthfeel. So we will downgrade that if it tastes like a Cabernet or not, or a Spätlese.

[00:28:04] If it's an Auslese, it's good, then we'll model it as an Auslese. And that is defined on the vintage mainly. I in person don't care a lot about numbers. The most important number for us is the vintage, which is on the label.

[00:28:19] There are vintages with, let's say the 2015 vintage, with a little bit of higher alcohol. And then Spätlese and Auslese, they have the same alcohol. That's on paper, it doesn't matter. It's about the taste.

[00:28:32] And then for example in 2013, which was a little bit of a cooler vintage with a lot of rain, we didn't even make an Auslese Drocken, just because that complexity was missing. So it's always depending on the vintage what we do and what we do not do.

[00:28:50] So that's something we will know nine months after harvest, in summer when we do the blending trials. So what tends to factor into reasons why an Auslese pick might end up tasting like a Cabernet or Spätlese? Well, that's hard to say.

[00:29:06] The picking decisions are done basically on colors of the grape. So light yellow is technically the ideal Cabernet grape. Golden berries, the majority of golden berries on the cluster would be the Spätlese and amber colored would be the Auslese.

[00:29:24] Small shot berries you call them, those will go into the reserve selection, the R selection. But somehow fermentation is a lively process. First we produce the grape, which is a hard job. Then we go through another process, which is fermentation to have the wine.

[00:29:45] So even the light yellow berries, which are supposed to be Cabernet, they can be really complex at the end of the day or not. So that's something we don't know and that's why it's always a little difficult to say what we'll end up with.

[00:29:58] We do need to rely a little bit on nature and that's what nature gives us. What we make actually is then the blending and the filtration, but we do not really influence the fermentation. If we decide this barrel, this barrel, this barrel goes into the Cabernet, we'll rack

[00:30:14] it off, put it in a bigger barrel and blend it. Then we'll filter it and then we'll bottle it. That's how it looks like. It sounds easy, right? But it's still a lot of work. Is there anything kind of nonlinear about how you pick the lots?

[00:30:30] Does something that seems Spätlase or Auslase in one particular barrel end up in a Cabernet just because it tastes better that way? Yes. It's all about the taste at the very end of the day.

[00:30:42] Of course, it's about the taste of the grapes, but like I said, that's one product and then after fermentation, it's another product. We had experiences with a three-year-old vineyard which already goes into Auslase Trocken and a 25-year-old vineyard which goes into the Cabernet.

[00:30:59] It can be the most beautiful grapes, but if they only taste like a Cabernet, they taste like a Cabernet. But at the same time, let's put it the other way, an Auslase Trocken does not have to be the beta wine. Cabernet can be a really good wine.

[00:31:15] Sometimes you have more fun with a Cabernet than you have with the Auslase and the other way around. I mean, that belief is probably something that plays into your guys' decision to stay with the Prodigates, right? Because you don't necessarily think that one expression is the best. Exactly.

[00:31:29] The Predicate system gives us that freedom and liberty to do that. I mean, the Predicate system is based in the 70s, I think that's when they started really doing that. And that's when the weather was totally different. That's when viticulture was totally different.

[00:31:43] And when I listen to my dad talking about Riesling, like they had in the 50s and 60s, they had green heavy clusters of Riesling. Riesling never turned yellow or gold back in those days.

[00:31:58] So there was a lot of research done and a lot of clonal selection done that we get those grapes ripe these days, and it's no longer a problem to reach the Cabernet and Spitzlasser levels usually. That's why we don't focus on those numbers anymore.

[00:32:15] The Cabernet, originally with less sugar, which is less ripeness, always has been the lightest wine. If I have a warm vintage like 15, the wine can be heavy in comparison to a vintage like 13. But in that specific vintage, it's still the lightest wine of the range.

[00:32:36] And that's why the vintage is the most important. And that Predicate at the end of the day, of course shows you that the wine is not capitalized. So you said you're not a numbers guy. How do you determine when you want to pick?

[00:32:49] You said color of the berry and. The taste, of course the taste. The color is more like the hint for the pickers. We decide by the taste. I mean, Riesling develops a little bit of a musket flavor too.

[00:33:01] And as soon as that flavor is there, we want to start to pick. Before that, it'll be Riesling, but not the Riesling we want. If it has a good gooseberry flavors and all that stuff, we will start to pick it when it's ready for the taste.

[00:33:17] It seems like the skins are part of the style for you. Yes. The more flavors are in the skin, you know, why not break the skin and have it overnight on the skin to extract that.

[00:33:29] Get more flavors out and also get some tannins out of the skins too. I think that's part of that textural thing that you get later. Yeah. And also, I mean, the tannins, since we have it on the lease for a long time, the tannins

[00:33:42] help to balance out a little bit that mouthfeel. If you have a thin wine and have that on the lease for a long time, it'll be only like a brioche and there will not be the texture what you have with tannins.

[00:33:57] Funny enough, there's the last maybe half year or a year, there are people coming to taste the wines tasting room and the word bitter, which is usually negative, is coming back as a positive meaning.

[00:34:09] Like the bitters in a cocktail, that is a positive bitter that plays in our favor because those tannins, they are a little bitter and they help for the mouthfeel and the structure of our wines. And they come from skin contact for sure.

[00:34:24] We look for that little in the wine, a little bit of that bitter structure, which adds to the total mouthfeel. So a lot of times when I talk about this German Riesling's little savory has a textural element,

[00:34:37] people think I'm talking about like diesel petrol notes, but actually I don't get those in your wine. No, I personally don't like those flavors and I think they are related to a lot of sunshine.

[00:34:50] On the grapes and what we do not do is we do not do leaf plucking. We don't take the leaves off until like two weeks or one week before harvest. I do not like those flavors and I think they come from the sunshine and that's why we are

[00:35:07] very gentle with that. We take laterals off in the grape zone to have a lot of air, to have some sun in it, not everything in the shade, but I don't want that sun exposure. Petrol flavors, they can kill the wine if it's too much.

[00:35:24] You have multiple vineyards that you work with, probably the most famous is the Saarmagen. Yes, it's based on an old Roman limestone quarry. The main part is south facing. Then we do have the Steinacker vineyard, which translates into a stony field and that's how

[00:35:40] exactly the soil looks like. We do have the Kreidkeller that translates into a chalk cellar and then we have the Annenberg. There's some chalk in it and sandstone as well. It's a nice vineyard, we have a Chardonnay in there, but the most important is the Saarmagen for sure.

[00:36:01] The Saarmagen is limestone, there's Les Lomes limestone and then there's a little spot of it which is Terra Rosa, so it's like red limestone. Okay, let's take a moment here in the episode to highlight what Dominique Sona has just now told us. The Saarmagen has limestone in it.

[00:36:21] In fact, as he told us earlier, it's based on an old Roman limestone quarry and it is worth keeping this presence of limestone in mind. Why would that be? Well because Kolaruprecht specializes in dry white wines.

[00:36:37] Of course, the climate of the place plays an especially large role in any decision to opt for dry white winemaking in Germany, as Sona already alluded to. Katharina Prum of the JJ Prum Winery also spoke about climate when she compared the

[00:36:51] wines of the Rheinhessen and the Falls to the wines of the Mosel, where her family is based. And for this region, the dry wine fits much better. I, for example, when I taste the wine from the Falls, in most cases I prefer the dry wines.

[00:37:06] It's a different climate, it's not far from us, but it's an absolutely different climate to the Mosel. Usually the wines there are, yeah, the climate just fits dry wines very well. But there are numerous instances in Germany where those working with vineyards on limestone

[00:37:19] have opted also to make dry wines. And someone to think about in this context is Egon Mueller, who sees a real distinction between slate and limestone vineyards. From my winemaker's standpoint, limestone and slate are on the opposite sides of the spectrum.

[00:37:41] Mueller, for a short time, used to make dry wines from slate in the Scharzofberg, but gave up the practice as unsuitable and not to his liking. However, he also has a vineyard on limestone, and he does focus on a dry wine from that vineyard.

[00:37:58] He's also noting the taste markers of the limestone influence in the final wine from it. Somebody else who makes dry wines from limestone vineyards, in fact several of them, is Klaus Peter Keller in the Rheinhessen.

[00:38:11] And Keller also identified limestone markers in the taste of his most famous wine, the G-Max. It's a really very, very gifted parcel, a great, great limestone rock parcel with very old Riesling wines, which just shows beautifully what we want to express with Riesling.

[00:38:31] So the deep minerality of the limestone in combination with the beautiful acidity, which just makes the wine you want to drink it. Keller went even further, identifying limestone as an enabler of dry white wine production, for example, in this comment.

[00:38:50] So my mother comes from the Mosel, so also the idea of off-dry and sweet wine is in my veins. But we have rocky limestone soils and we can produce both. So I focused a little bit more on the dry and off-dry style.

[00:39:06] Keller is pointing out that working vineyards on limestone gave him the option to produce dry wines. This is the type of reasoning that not everyone might share, but it is worth pointing out

[00:39:17] that Keller and Mueller are often thought of as some of the very best at what they do in terms of German winemaking. After a brief message from our sponsor, we'll hear more from Dominic Sona about Kolaruprech's most famous vineyard, the Sommagen.

[00:39:34] Would you like to hear more new episodes of I'll Drink to That? Consider making a gift donation to support the program. You can donate from anywhere by making use of the PayPal or Stripe links on the show website. And that website is alldrinktothatpod.com.

[00:39:50] That's I-L-L-drinktothat-P-O-D dot com to directly support the show. Look for the PayPal or Stripe insignia. Direct donations are the number one reason that this show continues to exist. Do your part today. It's diverse. It's a big winery. It's about 40 hectares, I think.

[00:40:11] And we have about four and a half in it in the main part. So we do pick block by block, but we do not bottle block by block at the end of the day.

[00:40:21] So some of our best wines can be this year from this block and next year from this block. So you have four and a half hectare of the Sommagen, but that's kind of also the original part of the Sommagen, right? Because it was expanded.

[00:40:34] Yes, it was expanded big times in land reconstructions. That is mainly the original part, yes. It's the south-facing part, some terraces as well in it. And it's getting ripe slowly, which is important.

[00:40:49] The elevation is a little bit high or higher and it only gets the warmer winds, which is really good. When you decide at the tasting table, this is an expression of cabinet, you know, trocken Sommagen. This is an expression of spätlase trocken Sommagen. This is also trocken.

[00:41:07] This is R. What are you looking for in those expressions? I mean, I understand you're looking for more viscosity in the higher prodicates and maybe more alcoholic weight that's visible on the palate. But what is the expression of Sommagen supposed to be at the cabinet trocken level?

[00:41:23] You know, the big goal in the winery is to be able to finish the bottle yourself the day you open it. And the cabinet is that wine you should have the most fun when it's young.

[00:41:36] It should be a wine you can drink anytime without food, with food and let's say an aperitif or something. And the spätlase is a wine which can be a little bit more complex, a little bit more

[00:41:48] elegant, a little bit bigger at the same time than a cabinet. And it's supposed to be the best food pairing of those three, ideally. And the auslase is meant to be the most complex. Sometimes you can't even drink it for five years until it opens up.

[00:42:07] And that is a wine you can have without a meal. I mean, actually that wine is made to be consumed by itself. But do you see a certain fruit profile that's the same in those or does it differ? The grip on the tongue.

[00:42:20] I mean, that's something which is the same in all three. Flavor is not necessarily. Oh, that's interesting. So what happens? They get deeper with the higher prodicates? They do. They get deeper and they get longer and there's much more going on on the tongue, the higher you go.

[00:42:37] Do you get aromatic notes that differ based on the prodicates or? Well, the cabinet can be a little bit more fruity in the nose. The auslase can be a little bit more going towards the Gliese flavors too, like that brioche flavors and all that stuff.

[00:42:52] But the cabinet can be like that as well. The lightness of it is more or less based on the mouthfeel. Because a lot of times when I think of light cabinet from Germany, I think of a kind of

[00:43:04] wine that's the opposite of the wine that you guys make. I think of a fruit focused wine. Totally agree on that. I totally agree on that. But you cannot compare our cabinet to someone else's cabinet. Our cabinet, it can be light for us.

[00:43:21] Not necessarily as the typical German cabinet. You would usually recommend that people drink the cabinet while they're waiting for their auslase in the cellar. Exactly. Because the wines are known for aging quite well. Ah yes, yes, yes.

[00:43:33] Even the light wine and the cabinet can age for 15 years if you want to. Like I said, I'm not a number guy. But the cabinet, you should be able to store for 10-15 years. And the Spätle is another five. And the Auslase another five.

[00:43:50] And the Ahr then another five. When those curves happen, do you see different parts come out in the wine that weren't there before in terms of the expression of the Saumagen? Do you see something change with age? Usually the wine closes up and opens up.

[00:44:04] That's something what you see. And that's a good sign because then you know that the wine is alive. Maybe it is part of the Saumagen that you can age it that long and not only the lees contact and the air influence. Could be a reason too.

[00:44:20] What you see is that the Annenberg Vignette, for example, those wines you cannot store as long as the Saumagen wines. But they are made the same way. The Riesling and Annenberg is planted on sandy soils. So it's like probably doesn't go that deep.

[00:44:34] And the limestone helps maybe to get that aging potential higher than the sand does. So when the Saumagen wines shut down, which I think you were just saying that they go into shutdown sometimes. Yep. How long is that phase? How long would it be shut down?

[00:44:51] It's not like they go completely down. It's a slow wave. Maybe half a year and then they open up again and then they can go down again. They can stay open too, but it's not like they shut down for five years. That's something they don't usually do.

[00:45:09] They may come up after five years, but before that you will realize that they don't really deeply shut down. But you can see that or you can taste those waves.

[00:45:20] Because a lot of times I do think of the Saumagen as a more textural wine than a fruit wine. Maybe because of how it's made, but maybe also the vineyard. Sometimes a textural wine is harder for me to know that it's shut down because it's not

[00:45:31] all about the fruit anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And fruit flavors is something volatile, right? So that's something which will go away anyway, somewhere in the development of the wine. Sometimes I get like myrrh, a set of spices and palate notes that aren't really fruit. Yeah.

[00:45:52] That is a good question if that's from the Saumagen or not. That's probably the whole influence of everything we do. But I can see that the difference between the Steinacker and the Annenberg and the Saumagen, the Saumagen has that the most.

[00:46:06] So it must come from the vineyard more than from the winemaking process probably. You said the R wines, which is a kind of a reserve that you make, that's often the shot berries or the Milrendache, right? Yeah.

[00:46:21] So a special selection, which is not happening every year just because there's not every year a shot berries to it, depending on flowering and bloom. You know, sometimes if the vintage is like really, really ripe and we get a lot of amber

[00:46:35] colored, like super ripe amber colored berries, those go into that R selection too. But at the end of the day, again, it needs to taste like an R. So it needs to have that special extra, which I can't really describe. You need to taste that.

[00:46:50] Those wines you can age for 25 years or longer if you want to. That's a dry wine, right? And then there's a double R too. There's a double R as well, but the last one was done in 2009.

[00:47:03] Since then we haven't done one, but I think what we did in the last couple of years is that we tried to raise the bar. So the quality of the Cabernet de Spade is on the regular Auslese is supposed to be a

[00:47:18] little higher than maybe in the past. So some potential R went into the regular Auslese and the Spade Laisse, so maybe some potential double R is now a single R. I don't know.

[00:47:31] It doesn't seem like you guys get a lot of botrytis influence in the Sambarg, am I reading that right? We are not straight on the river, so we don't have as much folk as other wine growing areas in Germany have.

[00:47:45] We do not have as much botrytis as others, let's put it this way. But there is botrytis around and depending on the year, like in 2016 there was none. 2015 there was almost none. We at Köln-Aberbrecht, we do not work with botrytis, usually for the dry wines.

[00:48:03] We drop it on the ground because I don't think botrytis will benefit our wines. I wonder if that's maybe a reason why you see some dry wines from the falls, there's less botrytis influence.

[00:48:17] Yeah that's why you see more dry wines in the falls without botrytis, that's for sure. Also we are in a warmer climate. And probably limestone, Riesling on limestone. Yeah I mean I think that gives a little bit of a benefit for a dry wine.

[00:48:34] So what do you typically eat when you drink the, say, Sambargen Spade Laisse, Trakken Riesling? Do you eat Sambargen, which is also a dish? That fits actually really well, I mean it's stuffed pig stomach, stuffed with kind of sausages, meat, potato and stuff.

[00:48:50] And you eat that with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut, and we all know sauerkraut goes well with Riesling for sure. But something which works really well with an Auslöser Drocken, like even like I said

[00:49:02] it's not like a fruit wine, it's Liberico, that's something which goes really well with Auslöser Drocken. Do you tend to decant the wines? Do you give them more air? The younger they are the more.

[00:49:13] Funny enough, right, they still need a lot of air during the fermentation process and then the barrel, but they still need another little bit of air before you drink them sometimes. And also you should not drink it too cold.

[00:49:27] You can treat it like a Burgundy actually, not too cold and decant it, then you will have much more fun at the beginning. Because I mean the bottle is small, it's only a couple glasses.

[00:49:37] If you pour it right out of the bottle, if it's young, it's not the same fun. I think you miss some of those textural notes that can come out. Yes exactly. Also the taste, the wine is getting richer, richer but not bigger. More harmonious. Yes exactly. Totally agree.

[00:49:54] But again that's unusual for German Riesling. It's not what I think to do. It is yeah, but that's what we are, we're a little special and some things others can do better. We do what we do best. We stick with what we do.

[00:50:12] So what have the vintages been like since you got there? So 10, 11. Yeah well 10 was a little bit of a cooler vintage with a little bit more rain. 11 was a really warm vintage. 12 was cooler in harvest, so with a really long harvest. 13 was another cooler vintage with rain.

[00:50:31] 14 was warm and rain. 15 was not necessarily the warmest but the sunniest vintage we've seen so far. Riesling can still handle the weather. I mean when you go back to the 03, 2009 and 2011 vintages which were like the first real warm vintages, Riesling was able to handle that.

[00:50:54] You know when we have a vintage like 15 for us, which was extraordinarily sunny and a lot of brightness, we just made a little more sweet wine then. 16 was very interesting. 16 we had a very warm summer and a heat wave by the end of August, early September so we

[00:51:14] thought it'll be another really early year and then nothing happened so we had a long hang time. We didn't finish harvest until October 24th I believe. That was a really good vintage in my eyes. Actually warm but ended up cool during harvest again.

[00:51:32] And 17 was another warm vintage, comparable maybe to 15 but the TA is a little higher. But the vintages were good so far. The bad news is that the rain which is supposed to come in summer these days comes a little

[00:51:48] later so more like in the end of August into the ripening process. So we do have a little bit more rot which will cut down on the ground so we'll lose more grapes and wine at the end of the day. But it is nature, right?

[00:52:03] It would be boring if we would have every year the same. What we can do is like we can do work a little bit on the canopy management like trimming later or earlier or whatever and then we can work with a cover crop.

[00:52:16] We can sow it in earlier or we can do less rounds with a cultivator or something like that. Other than that, if we have that vintage like 16 again we're pretty happy with that. If it's because of climate change please bring those vintages more often.

[00:52:36] So we can work on soil management and the canopy management. That's something we can do. You need to be flexible in times like this. Like 14 for example we had a lot of rain.

[00:52:49] Of course there's a risk of losing a lot of grapes but the weather forecast was really good for one weekend so we waited for that one weekend for the Sauermargen Riesling. We didn't even pick on that weekend, we just let the sun on it and guess what?

[00:53:06] Like a couple days later those flavors were slowly developing, the flavors we were looking for. That helped really a lot for those 14 wines and I think we're all proud of those 14 wines. Like the patience you need sometimes to wait a little longer and then our 14 is much better

[00:53:28] than in general people say about the German 14 vintage. Also the climate change helped so the acidity is not as... I mean Riesling is no longer an acid beast to be honest. There were sour Rieslings in the 80s that's for sure but you barely find a sour Riesling

[00:53:47] anymore taste-wise right? That is helping for the average consumer to get their hands around dry Riesling too. What about Spätburgunder? So Spätburgunder is doing really well these days. Germany is more and more famous for it.

[00:54:04] We're the third largest producer in the world for Pinot Noir, Spätburgunder. There's winemaking influences which did drive that quality up for sure in the last couple years. What do you think some of those changes have been?

[00:54:17] There's a little bit more control of fermentation and then there's more control of oak. Back in the 90s, end of 90s early 2000s they were just happy to get some barrique barrels

[00:54:30] and now we certainly know that we need to look for the type of oak and the type of toasting that's something which changed for sure and also the time in barrel. So less time or more time?

[00:54:44] Less time and a little bit of less toasty flavors but also if you look to the viticulture side there was a lot of things happening with the clonal selections. In the 1990s there was almost nothing from Dijon clones it's been all like Marie Infelder

[00:55:04] and German Pinot Noir clones which still can make a good red wine, a good Spätburgunder, a good German wine but now with a little bit of clone selection from Quasenheim some Dijon clones they do get ripe these days. They did not get ripe in the 90s.

[00:55:20] Did get a lot of rot but not ripe and those clones get ripe now so there's a lot of diversity going on. Spätburgunder is benefiting from that climate change. And how do you see Spätburgunder at Kolaruprach?

[00:55:33] Is it typically a wine that you would age for a while or is it typically something you drink on release? Well actually make a Spätburgunder Kappinettrocken which is even there we use the Perry card.

[00:55:45] That is a wine which you can drink within five years so you don't need to age that too long because it's it is the classic German Spätburgunder version so a little bit lighter in taste not necessarily in color and that's aged on neutral oak 2500 liters 600 liters

[00:56:03] and then we do make a Perique version as well which is aged then in Perique barrels and that's a different clone selection and a little bit of a more limestone in that. That wine you can age for longer.

[00:56:18] Still not sure how long but 10-15 years I would go for sure yeah. What about vine age? Do you see a real difference when you work with Pinot Noir versus Riesling when it comes to vine age?

[00:56:28] I believe that probably Riesling needs a little bit more time than Spätburgunder does. We have a couple good like younger Spätburgunder vineyards and they already show really good fruit really good quality. But that might have to do with that vine material thing you were talking about?

[00:56:44] Probably yeah probably the soil as well it may be some good spots for it. Dominic Sona thinks that patience is the key at Kolaruprecht thank you very much for being here today. Thanks for having me. Dominic Sona of Kolaruprecht in the Falls of Germany.

[00:57:00] All Drink to That is hosted and produced by myself Levi Dalton. Aaron Scala has contributed original pieces. Editorial assistance has been provided by Bill Kimsey. The show music was performed and composed by Rob Moose and Thomas Bartlett. Show artwork by Alicia Tenoyan.

[00:57:17] T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs and so much more including show stickers, notebooks and even gift wrap are available for sale if you check the show website alldrinktothatpod.com that's I-L-L drink to that P-O-D dot com which is the same place you'd go to sign up for

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[00:57:50] That's super important to see every episode and thank you for listening. Before we go I'd like to acknowledge the work of several people whose writing affected questions asked and statements made in this episode. Their work directly influenced this episode and they include Lars Karlberg writing on

[00:58:24] his blog larskarlberg.com, Eric Steinberg writing on that same blog, and the tasting notes and thought pieces of David Schiltknecht who has previously been a guest on this program and whose notes I accessed on vinniss.com.

[00:58:39] I'd also like to note the presentation Tom Scott published under the heading German Viticulture the last 20 years which can be found on jansisrobbinson.com. I recommend checking all of those resources out for yourself if you'd like to know more about the subjects discussed in this episode.

[00:58:58] We started to measure the pH last vintage and before that we didn't even have a pH meter. The first time I really heard about pH was in 03 when we had this really hot summer, well first time related to wine. But I don't care too much about it.

[00:59:20] My philosophy is always the less I know the less I care. Sometimes you have a really low pH and also a low TA and sometimes you have a high TA and a high pH. But that goes with the vintage.

[00:59:36] So we do need to care of that a little bit but it's not that significant in my eyes, for our wine style of course. But if we would not have a measurement to measure the pH we would even not know what it is.

[00:59:53] I mean 100 years ago they didn't measure the pH and people say they made great wines back then, all over the world.