German Riesling Steal: Pristine 2002 Kabinett, Only $9.98!

To all Wine Exchangers,

The Paul Anheuser winery is no stranger to these pages.  In our quest to see as broad a spectrum of German wines as we can, we have found some interesting efforts from this Nahe producer. Our previous muses from them were, of all things, some rather compelling rosés.  Current owners, brothers Rudolf and Paul, grow the fruit and make the wine apparently with an eye to something of a library program and a dedication to drier style wines.  That is why this traditionally styled little gem came as something of a surprise to us. As we have stated many times, great Rieslings can and should age.  As they develop in the bottle they can evolve in a number of ways.  The best examples show secondary aromas including some minerality and well as less ‘primary’ fruit flavors.  The overt sweetness dials back, the mid-palate softens and becomes more layered, and it always works beautifully as long as there is sufficient balance and acidity to maintain the wine’s finishing lift.  When all of that happens, you’ve got some Zauber (magic) going on. We are fans of such examples and constantly send out the signal to suppliers to bring such things our way.  Apparently, there are a few of you out there who are also fans because we have sold through every offer we have made, though in truth it doesn’t happen all that often (maybe once or twice a year).  When it does, we don’t hesitate.

The Anheuser Kreuznacher Kalenberg Kabinett 2002 is one of those.  With its classic Nahe lines of apricot and pear with some underlying earthy minerality, this wine is in surprisingly fine shape.  The vineyard has something to do with it, one of the Nahe's best, with some guy by the name of Donnhoff being one of the other owners in this site.  He makes a $30 single-vineyard Riesling from here.

There was a time that growers thought the 2002 vintage might turn out even better than the vaunted 2001s.  In the end, the October weather wasn’t quite perfect enough, but certainly good enough to bring in some winning wines.  A vintage report from the period summed it up this way, “The overall vintage character of 2002 shows lushly ripe fruit, very focused vineyard terroir identities and higher than average acids.”  The Anheusers themselves called it, “A great vintage equal to 2001 with good yields, excellent acidity levels, healthy ripe fruit and perfect harvest weather.”

Given the results here, we certainly can’t argue.

This one certainly evolved nicely in the bottle and presents a lovely and versatile beverage for current ‘applications’ including as a killer foil for a number of Asian dishes.  A traditional, lightly fruity kabinett sitting in a perfect place from a top German terroir, it was showing exactly what we were looking for in this kind of wine, substance and complexity with both freshness to the fruit and the development of complexing secondary aromas and flavors of wildflower honey, spice and mineral with the fruitiness dialed back.  A piece of history!

This wine comes directly from the Anheusers cool, vaulted cellar, and the Anheusers suggest the wine will still develop until at least 2022.  We think it is in a perfect place right now.

With visions of Thai food dancing in our heads, we asked how much this delectable little number would cost.  When they told us, we were pretty sure they had made a mistake!  When we asked again and they said the same thing, we bought every drop they had before they changed their minds.  We've never found an aged Riesling of this caliber for $9.98...ever.