UPDATED THE 10th, 20th, AND 30th OF EVERY MONTH, WHETHER WE’RE SOBER OR NOT!
Friends of the Friends
of the Forgotten Grapes
Please support them because
they support us...with wine!
Doing for Forgotten Grapes what
Dancing With the Stars does for
forgotten celebrities.
Copyright ©2009 by ForgottenGrapes.com
...And Introducing
Müller-Thurgau as Kelly LeBrock’s Character from the movie Weird Science
Ahh, Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science. Find me a red-blooded heterosexual American male who was between the ages of 10 and 35 when the movie came out and who didn’t lust after or harbor a crush on Kelly LeBrock’s Lisa in the movie, and I’ll hold up a mirror and show you a liar. From the cropped shirt and underwear she wore when she first sasheyed into Wyatt’s room to that dress she wore when she, Gary and Wyatt cruised into Chicago, to the movie’s final image of her in a bandage strip and tight workout short...well, you see the picture to the right. Come on now.
This week’s Forgotten Grape Müller-Thurgau may not be as pretty as Kelly LeBrock to some, but it does have a few things in common with her character in Weird Science. First and foremost, both of them were created artificially in a lab. Well, alright, Lisa may not have been created in a “lab” per se, but Wyatt’s room at the time was close enough. Müller-Thurgau, though, was created in a lab – in the Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute in German’s Rheingau region in 1882, to be exact. Created by Dr. Hermann Müller (who hailed from the Thurgau canton of Switzerland; Müller. Thurgau. Get it?), the grape was supposed to be a hybrid combining the depth and complexity of the Riesling grape with the vigor, early ripening, and cold-weather sustainability of the Silvaner grape.
Unfortunately, much like how Gary and Wyatt’s little experiment using their own home computer and a U.S. Government mainframe didn’t quite turn out as expected, neither did Dr. Müller’s. Regardless, though, Müller-Thurgau soon became the most-planted white grape in all of Germany, reaching its peak in the 1970’s (much like Kelly LeBrock reached her peak right around...the time Weird Science came out! Only kidding. It was probably when she did those Pantene “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” ads). Those numbers, however, have dwindled today, as the popularity of Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Silvaner, and other grapes increase outside of Germany.
The main knock on Müller-Thurgau has always been that because it ripens early and prefers colder climates, it produces fat wines that lack the necessary levels of acid to make a truly distinguished wine. And while this may be true with some of the Müller-Thurgaus produced in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other colder central European climates, Müller-Thurgau produces brighter, sharper, better-balanced wines in the northern regions of Italy, particularly the Alto Adige area of northeastern Italy (which just happens to border Austria and Switzerland). Almost all Müller-Thurgau wines are intended to be drunk young, due to their higher residual sugar contents and lack of acid.
Regardless of the positives of Müller-Thurgau, there are those critics out there who blame the mediocrity of German winemaking and wine culture that spanned the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s almost exclusively on Müller-Thurgau. These haters argue that because of the prevalence of the grape and the face that it produced sweet yet unremarkable wines on its own, too many Germans became accustomed to thicker, sweeter, more cloying wines (you may remember this same predicament being responsible for the anti-freeze-driven near-collapse of the Austrian wine industry in the mid 1980’s, as we touched on when we featured Grüner Veltliner) and German winemakers, in response to public demand, allowed their noble grapes of Riesling, Silvaner, and Gewürztraminer to overripen, sweeten, and then blended them with Müller-Thurgau to produce the sweet, unpalatable wines that Germans clamored after during the period, such as Liebfraumilch and Blue Nun (which we’ll get to down below).
Whether you blame Müller-Thurgau or not, the fact is that the wine has evolved quite a bit from those previous days when German winemaking registered nary a blip of the international wine map, and while the wines of Müller-Thurgau still can lack acid, the grape does produce perfectly quaffable, enjoyable wines very different from what we’ve come to expect from the traditional German white grapes of wine. Plus, thanks to the properties inherited from Dr. Müller’s misguided experiment, Müller-Thurgau has brought winemaking to countries and regions not typically known for making wine. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is your decision, but much like how Lisa showed Gary and Wyatt that they could be cool and popular, could get the girls, and didn’t have to be Robert Downey Jr. or Chet’s boot-licking whipping boy for the rest of their lives, and...sorry, I got distracted staring at the picture up there once again. It’s like I’m 12
all over again. Anyway, Müller-Thurgau. Forgotten Grape. Kelly LeBrock from Weird Science. Try some today. You won’t be disappointed. And don’t forget to hook up
the doll this time...
Care to comment? Click here to do so!
What It Looks Like, What It Smells Like, and What It Tastes Like
Müller-Thurgau looks like:
Müller-Thurgau smells like:
Müller-Thurgau tastes like:
Again, the early ripening affects the bouquet of the wine substantially. Because of the short amount of time and lack of sunlight, aromas and bouquets on the wine are generally very mild and take some time to be unleashed (due to the fact that there is more water left in the juice than wines that mature longer in hotter regions). The aromas you do get on Müller-Thurgaus are typically close to Sauvignon Blancs and Semillons – lots of grass, wet wheat, even an aroma of grape stems – typically due to the fact that some Müller-Thurgaus are allowed to rest of their stems longer than other whites. As the wine opens, though, you may pick up hints of cinnamon and black pepper and perhaps some apricot scents as well. But it will take time to coax these scents from the wine itself.
Because of the lack of acid in the wine, the most common complaint about Müller-Thurgaus is that they are “fat” wines, wines with a dull mouth feel lacking that sharp, tart bite you typically get with most white wines. Despite that, though, most Müller-Thurgau wines are exceptionally dry, with tart flavors akin to watermelon rind. There also may be a stemmy aftertaste to the wine depending on how long the fermenting juice has sat on its stems and skins.
Care to comment? Click here to do so!
• As we mentioned above, because of the unique cold-weather properties of Müller-Thurgau, the fact that it is a relatively vigorous vine in the amount of fruit it produces, and that it can be grown in and on a variety of different soils and pitches, vines of Müller-Thurgau have been planted in several countries and areas one does not immediately attribute to winemaking, such as Switzerland, England, Macedonia, and the low countries of Benelux (that’s Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg for the uninitiated.)
• Despite the rise in international popularity of other German white grapes like Riesling, Silvaner, Kerner, and Gewürztraminer, Müller-Thurgau hasn’t fallen off that much in terms of its popularity in Germany. It still ranks second to only Riesling in terms of the most planted white grapes in Germany, accounting for around 14% of all plantings in the country.
• The Müller-Thurgau grape also goes by the name Rivaner in both Germany and Austria. The Rivaner name is especially popular in Austria, as the grape is referred to also exclusively as Rivaner there.
Care to comment? Click here to do so!
Fun Facts to Impress/Bore People At Parties
From Brein’s Brain to Your Plate
“Okay, I’ve got to be honest here. Because there’s not a lot of acidity to this wine, it’s going to be a tough one to pair with food. Normally when you pair a wine with food, the wine either has a strong, refreshing acidic tartness to it, the low rumbling of lots of tannins, or a nice balance between the two. But with fatter wines like Müller-Thurgau, food combos can be tough. But since I’m a professional, I’m going to do the best I can here. Don’t complain if some of these don’t work out as well as they’re supposed to.”
“Just off the top of my head, I think that Müller-Thurgaus would actually pair well with a really creamy artichoke dip. A lot of the Müller-Thurgaus have a very creamy texture to them due to the lack of acid, and the mellowness of the wine will pair well with the artichoke heart and cheese flavors. This should work out really well together.”
“Along those same lines, something like roasted garlic would pair nicely with a Müller-Thurgau. There’s an earthiness and a soft sweetness that comes out in roasted garlic, but there’s depth there too that will contrast the dryness of the wine. Try roasting some garlic and smearing it on some fresh baked bread. Maybe even a bread with a little bite, like a sourdough loaf or something.”
“Alright, the only other thing I can think of to pair with a Müller-Thurgau would be just simply grilled sardines. Thin little fish grilled over an open flame Spanish style, topped off with some lemon and some fruitier-flavored olive oil. This would go especially well with one of the Italian Müller-Thurgaus, since they seem to have a bit more acid than the German and Austrian wines. But try it out and I think you’ll see it works.”
Care to comment? Click here to do so!
Chef Brein Clements is the chef/owner of Restaurant Omakase in Riverside, CA, which
is quickly becoming SoCal’s answer to El Bulli. Minus the molecular gastronomy. He
began his cooking career at Domaine Chandon in the Napa Valley and moved on to become
Chef de Cuisine at the famed Balboa Bay Club before opening his own restaurant. Plus
he’s only 28. My man knows his wine and he knows his food. Each week he’ll provide
ingredient and dish recommendations that match up well with the week’s forgotten
grape. You should heed what he says. No, seriously, heed it.
2008 Johannes Deppisch “Golf” Baden Rivaner
Trust us: we were having a tough time finding a Müller-Thurgau sold under the more
Austrian name Rivaner. We thought we had a bottle all lined up until we headed out
to one of our friendly neighborhood wine stores and they told us that someone had
bought all 8 bottles they had in stock and that the shop was unable to get any more.
Fortunately, by pure happenstance, the next shop we stopped at, Total Wine & More
(one of our new favorite wine shops) had this bottle just sitting there in its German
whites section. Viel Glück! I’d tell you more about why this wine is called “Golf”
but despite six years of it in high school and college, my German is more than a
little rusty. This wine, though, had a nose of wet grass and wheat and just a hint
of effervescence to it. It started off creamy in the mouth and fluctuated between
dry and sweet flavors, darkening a bit around the mid-palate. An interesting wine
that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. We got ours at Total Wine & More in Rancho
Cucamonga, but haven’t been able to find it on their website. Go figure. You should
just stop by on your own and pick it up.
2007 Perennial Vintner Puget Sound Müller-Thurgau
Pure Müller-Thurgau straight from the cold, overcast terroir of western Washington.
It’s not Germany but just as close as you can get. The initial nose of the wine was
very faint, as it took some coaxing and warming to get it out of the glass, but once
we did, it reminded us of the Semillons we enjoyed in a previous week, with lots
of grassy notes. As it opened further, we got hints of sweet spice like cinnamon
and just a hint of that black pepper we noted earlier. On the tongue the wine was
very dry with lots of watermelon rind notes. The acid tried very hard to push through
on the aftertaste and balance out the wine. Overall, though, we really enjoyed this
nice, soft treasure from Washington; it’s very, very different than what you might
expect if you ever had any of the eastern Washington/Yakima/Walla Walla/Columbia
River wines. As Mike mentioned in the interview, Perennial Vintners only produces
a small amount of wine each year that prohibits it from shipping to individual consumer.
However, you can buy it from them directly if you visit their winery, it’s available
at some of the finer wine shops in Seattle and the Puget Sound area (check out their
website for locations, and if you’re really hankering to taste the wine for yourself,
their neighbors at Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery (from whom they leased
the half-acre of Müller-Thurgau have bottles and cases available that can be shipped
to you directly! We highly recommend doing any of these things!
Our Friend of the Forgotten Grapes Tasting Squadron tastes all of the wines you see
here ahead of time to ensure that you aren’t getting anything rotten or clunky. We
also try to ensure that most of the wines highlighted here are affordably priced
($20 or less) so you can try them out for yourself without having to take out a second
mortgage or sacrificing your kid (or future kid’s) college fund to do so. Lastly,
the Friends of the Forgotten Grapes has relationships with all the fine wine purveyors
we link to in this section. We know them, we trust them. You can order these wines
from them online right now and be trying them out in the next couple of days. Do
yourself a favor and order from them by using the links below. It’s totally worth
it. And tell them that ForgottenGrapes.com sent you, too.
Because Müller-Thurgau wines tend to ripen early, can have quite a bit of residual sugar when harvested, and don’t have the acid component of other wines, the wines tend to spend more time mascerating on their skins than other white wines might typically. This imparts more flavor and structure onto the wine and also gives it a darker yellowish color, akin to dull gold or a gold-silver mix. You might find some Müller-Thurgaus with brighter, more canary or lemon yellow colors, but those wines are probably younger or did not spend as much time on their skins. But unlike some German whites, there will be a distinct yellow color to the wine.
2006 La Vis “Dipinti” Trentino Müller-Thurgau
Again, another wine we had to search high and low for, but when we finally fond it,
it was worth the weight. A very dry, herbaceous and vegetal nose gave way to very
soft, very faint apricots if you were patient enough to wait for it. The bouquet
on this wine was more complex than the others we tasted, and this wine was definitely
more acidic than the others as well (which made sense, since it came from the region
furthest south). A soft reserved palate made for a bone, bone dry wine, but a very,
very refreshing one. We picked this up at The Wine House in Los Angeles, but once
again, when we return to their website, there’s nary a mention of this wine anywhere.
We’re not sure what’s going on – some kind of massive conspiracy against us? – but
you may want to search around the Ebays and Interwebs for this wine, as it’s definitely
a keeper.
Go On. Try It. You’ll Like It. 
But Don’t Just Take Our Word for It...
Whenever possible, Friends of the Forgotten Grapes will offer up a short interview
with a winemaker working with the week’s featured Forgotten Grape. It’s his or her
chance to tell you a little bit more about who they are, the winery and wines, and
how he or she got started working with this particular Forgotten Grape. We do this
because we want you to get to know the winemakers and better understand their mind
set and passions for particular Forgotten Grapes. We also do this because we’re givers
and only want to make you happy. Isn’t that enough for you? What more do you want?
This week’s interview is with Mike Lempriere, owner and winemaker of Perennial Vintners
along with his wife Beth Schoenberg, on Washington’s Bainbridge Island. We stumbled
upon them and their wonderfully small and eclectic winery thanks to Mike’s MelondeBourgogne.com
web page, which gives you everything you ever wanted to know about Melon de Bourgogne
(a.k.a. The grape used to make Muscadet wines in France) but were afraid to ask.
We’re waiting on Mike and Beth’s first batch of Melon de Bourgogne to be bottled
and officially ready for consumption before we feature Melon as a Forgotten Grape
(and don’t worry, we will), but in the meantime, we were so spellbound by them and
their dedication to other Germanic Forgotten Grapes that we just had to interview
them when it came to Müller-Thurgau. Enjoy!
Friends of the Forgotten Grapes: We’re always interested in hearing how small independent
winemakers dabbling with Forgotten Grapes got their start in winemaking, particularly
when they’re producing wine somewhat off the beaten path. So what drew you to winemaking
and how did you get your start?
Mike Lempriere: My wife Beth and I have shared an interest in wine since the mid-1980's.
We became quite serious about wine tasting and wanted to really understand wine --
beyond just appreciating it. And of course we'd always been interested in the romantic
image of wine. In 1997, we were talking with the winemaker’s wife at a commercial
winery tasting room about making wine, and she sent us around to the back of the
winery where her husband was in the middle of crush. He set us up with 300+ pounds
of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, and we made a few carboys of wine in our basement.
After that I went pretty much crazy, and for the next few years we made as much as
we could (200 gallons/yr by federal law) buying mostly traditional grapes from eastern
WA growers. Of course the next step was that we quickly realized that the wine dream
was not just making wine, but working and living in a vineyard (Seattle is filled
with hundreds of interchangeable industrial-park-loading-dock wineries). We couldn't
move to eastern Washington where most of the vineyards are, as we had to keep our
day gigs in Seattle to pay for the property. We had visited the Bentryns at Bainbridge
Island Vineyard and Winery (BIVW) in 2001 and talked with them about wine-growing;
in 2003 they let us know that a good vineyard property near theirs was up for sale
-- we bought it and went pro the following year.
FoFG: So Müller-Thurgau may be the second-most widely planted varietal in Germany,
but it’s relatively unknown over here in the U.S., even under its traditional German
name Rivaner. So what attracted you to Müller-Thurgau enough to want to grow it and
produce wines from it?
ML: Propinquity! Our neighbors at BIVW planted a several-acre vineyard of Müller-Thurgau
in 1980 and have been producing wine from it ever since. They're trying to ramp down
winery operations somewhat as they're approaching retirement age, so they decided
to help us get our business started by leasing us a half acre of it. We'd had Müller-Thurgaus
before and enjoyed them, but didn't really fall in love with the grape until we'd
made it ourselves. It makes a wonderful seafood wine, perfectly matched to the Seattle
area climate. We encourage our customers (who are mostly local folks) to enjoy our
wines with other local fare, e.g. seafood -- we are avid members of the "locavore"
movement.
FoFG: You mention that the grape matches well with the Seattle climate. Your winery
is located on Bainbridge Island in Washington’s Puget Sound. What in particular makes
this area so good for growing German style varietals and specifically Müller-Thurgau?
ML: Climatalogically it's a great match. Gerard Bentryn (BIVW) is a climatologist/geologist,
and in the early 1970's he did a great deal of research on what would be the ideal
grapes for our true cool climate. The best flavors in fruit are brought out by being
grown near the cooler edge of their climactic area, allowing for slow, season-long
ripening; if the varietal ripens too quickly (e.g. the area is too warm a site for
this grape) the flavors will not develop optimally. There are some Müller-Thurgaus
from western Oregon, which is a bit warmer than we are, but to my taste they're not
as nice as ours <grin!>.
FoFG: I discovered you through your melondebourgogne.com website, and I know you’ve
planted some other German Forgotten Grapes and lesser known varietals in your vineyard
as well. What are some of the wines you going to be producing in near future that
you can give us a sneak peek into?
ML: We're also producing Madeleine Angevine from another small block leased from
BIVW. In our own vineyard, we're getting our first crop of tiny amounts of Schoenberger,
Zweigelt, Reislaner, Castor, Siegerrebe as well as the more recognized Pinot Noir
and Pinot Gris. We hope to get other trial plants as well; on the top of our "desired"
list are Chasselas, Trousseau Gris and Albarino. However, until we manage to obtain
use of neighboring properties for grape growing (a good possibility as we're surrounded
by ag. land), we won't have sufficient quantities for commercial release so it'll
be a few years yet. We're also trying rootstock combinations to see what works best
here including C3309, MG101-14, M44-53, Schwartzman. BTW: At BIVW they're producing
an Agria, Regent, Dornfelder, Dunklefelder blend, and they've tried Madeleine Sylvaner,
Leon Millot, Albalonga, and many others.
FoFG: Perennial Vintners’ production is very small and I know you don’t really ship
out wines to customers (you let you slightly larger neighbor Bainbridge Island Vineyards
do that), but for our Forgotten Grapes readers in the Pacific Northwest and those
readers who’ll be visiting the Northwest soon, how can they come visit you to taste
and buy your wine, and what should they expect?
ML: Thanks for asking -- the best way is to visit our website at www.PerennialVintners.com
and use our "Make Appointment" application. Alternatively, simply send us an email
from the "Contact Us" page, or call us and let us know you'd like to visit. We love
to show interested people around the vineyard and winery, and
will spend as much time with you as we can. (Bear in mind though that we do have
outside work, so you do need to call ahead.)
Care to comment? Click here to do so!
2008 Hans Schiller Rheinhessen Liebfraumilch
We told you we’d get to it, and now we’ve gotten to it. Liebfraumilch is a traditional
style of semi-sweet German wine blended from a combination of Müller-Thurgau and
Riesling grapes (typically with the blend favoring the Müller-Thurgau). The name
translates provocatively into “Beloved lady’s milk” (let your imagination run free
with that one) and was often referred to as “hock” by the English back in the day
(and by day, we mean 17th and 18th centuries). Liebfraumilch stands only one level
above the very bottom category on the German wine classification hierarchy, yet is
still wildly popular in its homeland because of its sweet and somewhat tart nature
and because it is normally super, super cheap. Who are we to argue? The 2008 Hans
Schiller we tasted was certainly a more forward and fruitier wine that the pure Müller-Thurgaus
we tasted, with scents of green apple, banana, and floral perfume on the nose. Brein
also got some mineral notes to it as well. Flavorwise, it had banana and traditional
Riesling notes of apple and fruit salad to it, as well as just a hint of sparkle.
However, when we tried this wine with food, it changed dramatically for the better.
A most unusual experience. Brein thought this wine would initially be great with
either a crab salad or a macadamia nut crusted Mahi-Mahi served with a pineapple
salsa, but once he tried it with food, we decided it might be best with raw oysters
and other shellfish, as long as you had a tangy Mignonette to cut the sweetness.
Our bottle was, in the traditions of Liebfraumilch, super cheap at
Total Wine & More, and this one is on the website, so we recommend you get some soon.
Capice?
Care to comment? Click here to do so!
