Riesling Dinner w/ Dönnhoff & Selbach-Oster

A “perfect” wine is not about dryness or sweetness, about weight or concentration, but rather about balance and the harmonious collaboration of a multitude of flavors and smells that draw you in and make you want to take another sip” – Johannes Selbach

It’s not often that one gets to be in the presence of wine royalty; even we of “The Wine World” can count the occurrences on a few fingers. So, when two of German’s heavy hitters come to town it’s a BIG deal – even better: we get to do a wine dinner with them! Dönnhoff and Selbach-Oster are two of Germany’s most respected Riesling producers. We will have Johannes Selbach and Sascha Schömel, Dönnhoff’s Export Manager, in the house to talk about their iconic wines.

German Riesling – though undeservedly maligned in the U.S. these days – was revered as some of the greatest wine in the world for centuries. Riesling is a perfect wine in many ways: it can be vinified in any way imaginable, and it pairs with everything! Germany is at the extremes of wine making latitude with much of its vineyards outside of what is habitable to many wine grapes; however, thanks to its rivers, German vineyards enjoy hospitable microclimates. Pair this with slopes so steep vineyard workers need to be harnessed to the hillsides, and one begins to comprehend the miracle that is German Riesling. Two of the modern masters of these intense terroirs are Dönnhoff, from the Nahe, and Selbach-Oster, from the Mosel.
The Dönnhoff Family has been in the Nahe, on the Rhine River, for over 250 years; their winemaking story began with Hermann in the 1920s, when he began bottling the Estate’s Rieslings. Hermann’s grandson Helmut is credited with bringing the estate into the top-tier of German producers. Cornelius, the fourth generation Dönnhoff, is now at the helm of the winery. He continues to follow the family motto: “[t]he vineyards speak for themselves. You have to listen to them.” According to famed wine professional Terry Theise,
“Dönnhoff wines hinge upon a paradox. Their essential nature is one of repose, with a kind of crystalline serenity providing a calm backdrop for the most densely profound expression of sheer information, so that one doesn’t fathom how a wine with so much to say can also seem so calm. To bring this about requires a virtuosity with texture, and the wines are miracles of evanescence without ever being vague or indefinite. They walk the earth in a different gravity than you or I do”.
The Selbach family has a 400-year tenure in the Mosel. The family wine business began in the 1600s when they used their ships to transport wine in barrels made by the Oster family. Fast forward to 1964, when the family separated its personal vineyards from its wine business. Johannes Selbach, and now his son Sebastian, farm the family’s impossibly steep, slate riddled vineyards – many of which are own-rooted – organically farmed and produce some of the Mosel’s most sought-after wines. Bringing it back to Terry Thiese,
“Johannes Selbach himself is a conspicuous sort of gentleman… Johannes’ wines, however, are the opposite of conspicuous. Though far from modest or retiring, they avoid all the gestures by which wines seek to attract attention… I wouldn’t describe Selbach’s wines as “introverted” but I would call them interior, because they focus on texture and their north star is authenticity…”