An Elbling and a Riesling

Sometimes as I walk around my local wine shop The Fine Wine Source, I see wines that I haven’t noticed before.  If it happens when I am there alone, nothing much happens, perhaps a little discussion and then we move onto other subjects.  It happens that one particular day, I had my Bride with me, who is also the Lord High Exchequer of Funds and known throughout the realm.  What caught my eye was a couple of older German wines and the next thing I know, we are doing an impromptu tasting, and I had to make my own notes, but that is fine, over the years I have been able to accomplish this minor task without much ado.

Weingut Matthias Hild Elbling Trocken Mosel 2017 is from Weingut Frieden-Berg GbR .  While this wine is from the Mosel, it is actually from the Upper Mosel, instead of slate, the region is limestone.  At the small town of Wincheringen, Matthias Hild farms about six hectares of mostly terraced vineyards on the hillside.  For this wine, he uses the old and ancient Elbling grape that use to cover basically all of Germany and Liechtenstein.  Elbling is still grown where Riesling cannot mature and grow, Elbling is high acidic in nature and very low in sugar, so the wine can be bracingly sharp to the taste and is often used for sparkling wines.  The vines on this estate are basically thirty to sixty years of age, but some of the vines were actually planted before World War II, and they are manually harvested, because of the terraced lands.  The winery has been referred to as romantic, because it is more a labor of love, with the intent of saving a winery that in today’s profit guided world, just doesn’t make sense, except for the true believers and followers.  The juice is fermented and goes through Malolactic fermentation in Stainless Steel.  This wine is definitely dry (trocken) with a low proof of normally less than 10% and is bracingly dry in a refreshing way.  I think that I would serve this wine before dinner with cheese and crackers and other light appetizers. 

Weingut Pfluger Riesling Buntsanstein Trocken 2018 is a beautiful dry white wine from the Pfalz or when I was growing up, it was the Rheinpfalz.  The region is one of the largest producers of both quality wines and table wines in both red and white offerings. Alexander Pfluger is the second generation at the helm of Weingut Pfluger, which is an organic and biodynamic estate, one of the first so designated in Germany.  While they are not part of the Verband Deutscher Pradikatsweinguter (VDP) elite group of the premier wine producers of Germany, he is in the VDP Academy and is considered one of the up-and-coming winemakers to watch and perhaps to start following.  The Pfluger vineyards are in the area around Bad Durkheim in the Pfalz.  Alexander Pfluger is convinced that the quality and the balance achieved in his wines is from his commitment of his biodynamic work in the fields. This very pale-yellow wine offered green apples and citrus with fresh acidity and a decent finish with terroir to balance out the wine.