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Müller-Catoir Bürgergarten ‘Im Breumel’ Grosses Gewächs Riesling 2021

Riesling from Pfalz, Germany

$147

$142ea in any 3+
$137ea in any 6+
Closure: Cork
In the context of fine wine today, this presents incredible value!

Description

After tasting the Erste Lager, I can’t wait to see what the GG has to offer!

Catoir’s Haardter Riesling 2021 Bürgergarten “Im Breumel” GG VDP. Grosse Lage opens with a deep, clear and aromatic yet also elegant, pure, refined and complex bouquet of ripe and juicy fruits intermingled with iodine and even some flinty notes. Juicy, round and savory on the palate, with animating saline and grippy minerality, this is a dense, tight and structured dry Breumel Riesling that shouldn’t be on sale at this early stage since the very best is still to come here. The wine was still very young at the GG tasting in Wiesbaden in August when it showed a good yet still robust finish, but it was only slightly more open and refined in December this year.

Stephan Reinhardt, The Wine Advocate 94+ Points

Check out all of the wines by Müller-Catoir

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

In the spectrum of German Riesling, where Mosel signifies finesse and the Rhinehessen is all about fruit and bold flavour, Müller-Catoir’s wines effortlessly straddles this divide, combining delicate, precise flavour and vibrant, juicy fruit, yielding an elegant fine wine great drinkability.

‘Im Breumel’ is a historic walled section (a ‘clos’ in other words) within the Haardter Bürgergarten vineyard.  Today, it gifts us Müller-Catoir’s only Grosses Gewächs bottling. Exclusively owned by Müller-Catoir, this uppermost parcel of the Bürgergarten is protected by a sandstone wall that creates a warmer microclimate. The area, which faces towards the southeast, warms very quickly in the mornings, and due to its proximity to the forest, cools soon after sunset. The fruit here is cropped at a very low 28-30 hl/ha. One-third of the wine was fermented and matured in 1,000-litre oak vessels.

About Müller-Catoir

The stunning Haardt Manor House which overlooks Burgergarten

The Müller-Catoir winery has been a family-owned business since 1744. It is now in the ninth generation, owned and run by Phillip David Catoir with Martin Franzen as the viticulturalist and winemaker.

The winery holds iconic status in the Pfalz and became legendary during the ‘70s and ‘80s under former manager Hans-Günther Schwarz who, supported by the Catoir family, refused to industrialise the Estate despite the strong trend in that direction in Germany at that time. The wines were one of the few bastions of authenticity and quality in an ocean of mediocrity. Today, with star vigneron Martin Franzen at the helm, the quality has risen even higher.

Under the Mosel-born Franzen, this historic Estate has become known for producing some of Pfalz’s most ethereal and fine-boned wines: tightly packed, un-showy Riesling that can take years to uncoil. A far cry then, from the Pfalz’s upfront, stand-and-deliver norm. That said, without dialling down Catoir’s traditional mineral character, the wines here have been gradually evolving towards a more expressive, textural and intense style.

9th generation of Müller-Catoir Phillip David Catoir with Vigneron Martin Franzen.

In the Vineyard

Müller-Catoir owns roughly 20 hectares of vines in and around the village of Haardt, in the hills outside Neustadt. The yellow sandstone that dominates here (significantly different to the red sandstone typically found in Pfalz) delivers a distinctive, smoky kind of minerality and more yellow-fruited wines.

The topsoils of Bürgergarten specifically are sandy and deep, with yellow sandstone bedrock below, a soil type that brings power, perfume and intense mineral freshness. In the ‘Im Breumel’ parcel, the soil here is more impoverished than the lower section of Bürgergarten, consisting of pure mottled-yellow sandstone gravel with a high ratio of decomposed stone.

The viticultural philosophy at Müller-Catoir is a simple one: spend a lot of time in the vineyard, working to the rhythm of the seasons. Under Franzen organic and biodynamic practices have been implemented in the vineyards, as well as new pruning techniques like the Poussard-Guyot.

In the Winery

The wines are made exclusively from estate fruit and created in the Müller-Catoir style: highly refined, with notes of minerality, elegant and uncompromisingly unique. Following a selective harvest by hand, fruit undergoes a slow, natural fermentation with no SO2 until racking or bottling, then careful maturing in the cellar, waiting as long as possible before bottling.

This all results in wines of deep fruit, high extract, ripe acidity and powerful vineyard expression. Crucially, the more recently released wines are also more accessible when young, a revolution under Franzen that has been no mean feat.

Deutschsprachler! Check out the video below for an in depth look at the winegrowing methods employed at Müller-Catoir.

The 2021 Vintage at Müller-Catoir

During the spring and early summer of 2021, farm manager Martin Franzen felt transported back to the 1990s, when last year’s vegetation was still considered normal. From the end of June, this was followed by heavy waves of Peronospora, which took a heavy toll on organic viticulture. “With a great deal of time, however, we weathered this phase well, and the harvest yield was even slightly above the average of recent years,” Franzen reports. It wasn’t until the end of August that “the weather tipped back from the 1990s to our current times. The summer became humid, the nights often remained warm.” The ripeness level at the end of August was anything but homogeneous, reports Franzen. “In addition to ripe grapes, unripe ones hung not only from vine to vine, but even on a single vine.” He therefore made a green harvest in all vineyards to pick and separate 10% to 25% of the grapes. “This was important and resulted in balanced, full ripeness with stable but not excessive acidity levels.” The harvest then started in mid-September. However, the very warm fall weather resulted in erratic ripening, which required very fast, individual harvesting. The main harvest then ended in mid-October before the big rains. Thus, 2021 in Neustadt-Haardt was again a year of fast, selective handpicking, still cutting away 5% to 10% of the berries because they were green or brown and not golden yellow. “The trick in 2021 was to achieve sufficient fruit ripeness in the fresh, cool vintage and to do so with perfectly healthy grapes.” Actually, 2021 was quite similar to 2004, Franzen believes. Back then, Müller-Catoir was world-famous primarily for its sweet and noble-sweet Prädikat wines, particularly Rieslaner and Scheurebe. Martin Franzen, on the other hand, has elevated the dry wines to the rank of Erstes Gewächs and Grosses Gewächs, and it is they that are consistently convincing, while among the Prädikats in 2021, only the Rieslaner Auslese and Beerenauslese from the Herzog fascinated me. Otherwise, among the dry wines, I find hardly any substantial differences between the Grosses Gewächs and the Rieslings from the Erste Lage. Both the Grosses Gewächs and the Erstes Gewächs from the Bürgergarten are expressive single-vineyard wines. Anyway, the site does not explain everything. Since Franzen has been at Müller-Catoir—that’s almost 20 years now—a mixture of at least six different clones has been planted in all new vineyards in order to have genetic diversity right from the start. “In the early days, these were the classic German quality clones combined with material from Alsace and the Jamek selection from Austria. For about 10 years, I have been using the new Geisenheim clones of the 300 series, which was built up from ancient Mosel Riesling vineyards. So, finally we have good plant material available again.” Again, six to eight different clones are mixed in new plantings. Old plants—the Flurbereinigung (land consolidation) in Haardt already dates back more than 57 years—are also repeatedly rejuvenated with this material, so that a colorful mix of younger and medium-aged vines stands next to the original vines. “Most of our crus come from these plantations,” says Franzen, for whom the mix of different clones of different ages is “a basic building block for individuality and vitality in the wine.”

Stephan Reinhardt, The Wine Advocate

Where in the World is Müller-Catoir?

The Müller-Catoir estate is nestled on the edge of the Palatinate located in Haardt, a tiny German wine district just outside the city of Neustadt, at the heart of the Pfalz wine region. The region is known for its high-quality Rieslings, which are typically complex and more full-bodied than those from other parts of Germany.

The German VDP has an excellent interactive map covering the wine growing regions of Germany. Click on the Map to go to the live version.

Map by Fernando Beteta, MS @fernandobeteta on Twitter
94+ Points

Catoir's Haardter Riesling 2021 Bürgergarten "Im Breumel" GG VDP. Grosse Lage opens with a deep, clear and aromatic yet also elegant, pure, refined and complex bouquet of ripe and juicy fruits intermingled with iodine and even some flinty notes. Juicy, round and savory on the palate, with animating saline and grippy minerality, this is a dense, tight and structured dry Breumel Riesling that shouldn't be on sale at this early stage since the very best is still to come here. The wine was still very young at the GG tasting in Wiesbaden in August when it showed a good yet still robust finish, but it was only slightly more open and refined in December this year.

Stephan Reinhardt, The Wine Advocate

95 Points

“The result is a classic style, very elegant and fine, with candied peach fruit combined with lemongrass and a suggestion of vermouth. The texture is creamy and enrobes the taut acidity. A timeless beauty.”

Decanter

Where in the world does the magic happen?

Weingut Müller-Catoir, Mandelring, Neustadt, Germany

Pfalz
Germany

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