REVIEWS

How I Taste Wine

Everyone has their own scoring system for communicating quality assessments, and we’ve all become very familiar with the U.S. system of scoring on a 100-point scale. My own method comes from a collector friend who used to keep empties on a “wall of fame,” penciling stars and pluses directly on the labels. This was over twenty years ago, and I don’t remember his exact criteria, but what developed for me is something personal that helps me remember my impression of the wine.

Here’s how it works:

***** = a superb example of terroir expression, wine-making skill, and class

**** = exceptional for its appellation and vintage

*** = a satisfying and delicious wine

** = good to very good, a wine without flaws

* = little motivation to drink

+ or ++ can be added to the one-star through four-star assessments, pushing the score higher.

Thanks for discovering this site and for your shared interest for “Wine in Germany & Austria.”

For the archives:

Weingut Dr. Bürklin-Wolf Riesling Deidesheimer Langenmorgen GC Pfalz 1999 (CMS label, magnum)

From one of three Deidesheimer sites classified as “GC” (Grand Cru) in Bürklin-Wolf’s internal 1994 classification. Bürklin-Wolf owns 0.68 hectares of the 10-hectare Langenmorgen, planted in 1976. Langenmorgen is arguably less known than other Deidesheimer sites like Hohenmorgen and Paradiesgarten, but Oskar Micheletti, Bürklin-Wolf’s head of exports, describes it today as “one of our most powerful and distinctive wines.” The soil here is red and white sandstone with sandy loam and loess deposits, usually yielding a broad and textural result. Soil, coupled with the relatively warm and lower acid 1999 vintage, might mean a wine with fading definition, but that was not the case when tasted in July of 2022. Broad-shouldered, sure, but focused with pineapple and Seville orange, concentration and length. This magnum, still layered with detail and more life ahead of it, is from a vintage that Micheletti says: “is one of the best vintages we had at Dr. Bürklin-Wolf in the last 25 years.” **++

About the label: more than 20 years ago, Bürklin-Wolf printed unique labels for the Court of Master Sommeliers, this one a 25th-anniversary bottling commemorating the organization's founding. "We had these labels printed in two or three vintages," says Micheletti. Today the Langenmorgen is only available with the original label for the 1500 bottles annually produced. The wine is identical to the 1999 Langenmorgen issued with the standard Bürklin-Wolf label.

Langenmorgen was declassified to Premier Cru in the 2000s. 1999 was the last vintage for many years with a Langenmorgen “GC” before being bottled as “PC” in 2001 and returning to a GC classification in 2013 after conversion to biodynamics, bringing it in line with VDP.Grosse Lage classification.

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