Opening remarks by Rudi Wiest
On the occasion of the VDP-Frühjahrs-Weinbörse 2007 in Mainz
Rudi Wiest by Rudi Wiest Selections, a leading importer of fine German wines in the United States market.
-Summary-
"Why we do the work- Used an anecdote that described how Henry Winston, the famous diamond merchant, sells to celebrities such as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor - because he loves and understands fine diamonds. We sell fine German wines to the finest restaurants and retailers in the U.S. because we also love and understand them!A Tale of Two Vintages- 1983 - great vintage along with a strong dollar. 1984 - poor vintage with a weak dollar.1983’s were sold mostly to retailers who declined on the 1984’s. The 1984 vintage helped us discover the “other” market namely restaurants. This was achieved by continually pairing a selection of single vineyard QbA’s at many lunches and dinners with great success. This exercise taught us about the need of continuity and simple presentation with on-sale customers, Voila - the Estate Riesling. We encouraged our growers to eliminate single vineyard QbA’s and sell them as Estate Rieslings. This helped to solve the continuity problem while also simplifying the label with a strong focus on the estate. We wanted to expand the concept also to Estate Kabinett and Estate Spätlese. However, the wine law a the time did not allow this i.e. leave of the vineyard you must replace it with the Bereich. Graf Matuschka helped in having the wine law changed and today estates like Robert Weil produce by far the greatest portion of every harvest as Estate wines!
This brings up the next subject: simplification, simplification, simplification!
There are two basic approaches when marketing fine wines:
- The Bordeaux model – the estate produces one wine that speaks for the estate, There are often second and third tier wines that produce additional revenue but add little to the image or prestige of the Estate.
- The Burgundy model – the Estate and the associated terroir or vineyards. More interesting but also more difficult to understand. There is focus on the estate but also on the vineyard because other than monopoles the vineyards in Burgundy often share many owners, much like in Germany.
In both cases the varietal does not play a role and in Burgundy, for example, the reds are understood to be Pinot Noir and the whites, Chardonnay.
- Make a large portion of the harvest Estate wines.
- Make a series of “reserve wines” using a uniform terminology that prevails in all the regions. We’d like to see the term natur or natural replacing Prädikat. These wines should never be chaptalized nor “concentrated”!
Without this simplification, we’ll never achieve prices that these great wines deserve. Germany simply produces the greatest white wines on Earth but because of the complexity of the system and multitude of choices we loose the focus the Bordeaux model brings to market. As little as 30 years ago, in 1977, I sold a bottle of Goldcap Auslese from Fritz Haag for more money than a bottle of Ch.Petrus.
Today we can only dream of the success the “Bordeaux system” has brought to its growers. - Biodynamic wines - an idea that the U.S. market likes, though organically produced wines will fill the same niche.
- Gray Market wines – Wines that are brought into markets on a resale basis where a representative is already selling these same wines with an exclusive agreement with the original source. We need to find a way to control this problem. Dom. de la Romanee Conti has solved the problem by numbering each bottle. Simple and it works.
- Choose the media carefully- the critic must have a basic understanding of the wines he chooses to evaluate. In the case of German wines he must appreciate, not necessarily wines of “size” but wines of finesse, elegance, raciness and refinement. He must carry no bias.
ZWIESEL :: GEROLSTEINER :: GAGGENAU :: HEIMBS :: WEINSCHULE
