BY Al Drinkle
Nobody lacks self-discipline like us at Metrovino. We make valiant attempts at restraint, but you’d never know it given the fact that we import 80+ disparate German Riesling labels each vintage. Despite its amorphous parameters, every year we encounter phenomenal wines in our travels that don’t fit neatly into our bloated “portfolio”. When a brief encounter with such a wine makes clear that a future without it would be impoverished, empty and meaningless, we import said wine for reasons of emotion — regardless of its lack of glass-pour potential at restaurants or inherent appeal to trophy hunters. (Yes, these wines often dwell in that strange financial purgatory that's beyond most restaurants’ BTG budgets, yet affordable enough to be regarded with suspicion by the many who assume that exceptional quality only correlates with lavish spending).
Consider this a plight to celebrate beauty in the world, and to encourage more of it. The last thing that we want to do, dear reader, is to dismiss a significant winegrowing achievement with apathy, in turn denying you a singular drinking experience. So without further ado, here’s our inaugural offer in the “Leave No Beautiful Riesling Behind” series.
Weingut Kerpen - The Sonnenuhr’s Most Versatile Custodians
2023 Kerpen Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese Trocken - Mosel, Germany $39 ¹
Lovers of Mosel Riesling will each have their personal favourites amongst the region’s great vineyards, but few would exclude the Wehlener Sonnenuhr from a short list of the very best. In 1963, André L. Simon wrote, “Wehlen can pride itself on having the finest vineyard of the Moselle (sic) in its Sonnenuhr", and three years later, Frank Schoonmaker reported that, “year in and year out, the wines from Wehlen's Sonnenuhr vineyard have consistently brought the highest prices of any wines of the Moselle (sic), and I think deservedly so.” He goes on to say that, “at their best Wehleners have no superiors and few equals — flowery, well-balanced with an almost supernatural combination of delicacy and richness, they are perfection itself.” Three decades later, Stuart Pigott claimed that Wehlener Sonnenuhr produces the “silkiest, most seductive wines on the Mosel", and that “at their glorious best the wines manage an astonishing balancing act between depth and concentration of flavour on the one hand and tremendous subtlety and delicacy on the other".
Ducks Admiring The Great Sonnenuhr Vineyard
It’s worth noting that all winegrowers in the village of Wehlen live in the shadow of the Joh. Jos. Prüm estate. Their track record of quality spans multiple generations and the family name is synonymous with the legendary Sonnenuhr vineyard. In fact, if you haven’t been paying attention over the last 20 years, you might think that Mosel wine starts and ends with Joh. Jos. Prüm… but in addition to countless other lost opportunities, such thinking would cause one to miss out on the zesty enterprise that is dry Mosel Riesling because the Prüm family doesn't mess with it!
Martin Kerpen (whose son, Matthias, has officially taken over control of the winery) lives in a modest abode a few doors down from the Prüm manor, and has spent his entire life tending the Sonnenuhr's steep slopes across the river. In fact, he seems unbalanced standing on flat ground! Tall, slender, quick to smile and alarmingly agile for his age, he built up the family estate from 2.5 hectares to the 9.5 that it is now — more than half of which is in the Wehlener Sonnenuhr. Matthias in turn is a thoughtful, inspired young man with a fervent love for Riesling. He has deep respect for the old-school Mosel wines of his father, and has no intentions of revolutionising the small family business (though there’s always room for a little tweak here or there). Their lives are intrinsically linked with those of their vines and wines, and though their namesake winery is still an insider secret in Canada, their multiple interpretations of the great Sonnenuhr vineyard arguably make them the site’s most versatile custodians.
Martin and Matthias Kerpen
During the eras that the previously-quoted praise was heaped upon the vineyard, a full-bodied dry wine from the Wehlener Sonnenuhr would have been more or less unheard of. So how does its sense of grace and understated persistence lend itself to this style? Well, for those who subscribe to synaesthesia, it must be pointed out that the wine is brilliantly aquamarine. This flavour allusion seems to horizontally bookend a vivid and seductive world like the sea and sky in René Clément's Plein Soleil. The instigation of this imaginary light is as soothing as it is blinding, giving way to a series of aromas and flavours that are mercurial but perpetually enchanting.
Sea spray, apple blossom and vetiver lead the way, quickly conjuring an interminable mille-feuille of slate and orchard fruit, as if all those BC peaches that we're being deprived of this year had actually been transmogrified into a salty Riesling. And yet the fruity components are fleeting, the wine's most enduring and profound statement being an avalanche of allusion — an endearing and enduring kaleidoscope of glacial, maritime, saline and geological triggers that leaves one salivating, nay, supplicating for the next sip.
Perhaps you know somebody who is both cryptic and charming, and perhaps they are one of the more interesting and enjoyable people in your life. Similarly, this wine is almost enigmatic in its level of complexity, yet an inherent and profound deliciousness magnetises its mystery.
2023 Weigut Kerpen Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese Trocken
This is not the kind of Riesling that you want to drink with spicy Thai food, for example (but we've got those too… just ask us!). Instead, you'll find it amiable with less exotic and piquant dishes that may or may not embody undue richness: a pierogi feast; roasted turkey or goose with a chestnut purée; chicken piccata; sweet corn salad with cucumber, basil and lime; choucroute garnie; gruyère soufflé; oysters; pork roast and cole slaw; cedar plank salmon, gratin Dauphinoise; sweetbreads with green peas; “artisanal” macaroni and cheese; and on and on and on. Like any wine that's worth drinking, it's also perfectly enjoyable all on its own.
This rendering of Sonnenuhr is absolutely delicious right now, such is the charm of the "serious” dry wines of 2023. To best capitalise upon its youthful glory, decant it for an hour and serve it slightly warmer than fridge temperature in a glass with ample space for the hypnotic aromas to stretch out. However, time in a loving cellar will encourage the authoritative slate tones to melt into mossy, seabound aromas and more caressing textures. In a perfect world where finances and cellar real estate allow, one would buy a case, drinking half of it over the next year or two and holding the rest until after the wine's tenth birthday.
There are 120 bottles of Kerpen's 2023 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese Trocken in Canada, and it’s only available at Metrovino.
¹ Some readers might find it odd that "Spätlese” and "Trocken” coexist in the name of this wine, particularly those who erroneously assume that the former term precludes sweetness. Given that “spätlese” directly translates to “late harvest”, this mistake is understandable, but the usage of the term first came to be bound by legal requirements in 1971 when fully ripe Riesling wasn't easily attainable. So the word “spätlese” denotes that a certain minimum degree of ripeness was achieved, and also that the wine is not enriched by the addition of sugar — but the winemaker still has the flexibility to pursue whatever style of wine they choose. In this case, the wine was fermented dry, thus the appearance of the word "trocken" in conjunction with the ripeness predicate.
