Mueller-Catoir Haardt Riesling Kabinett Trocken

The Wine... is not one to recede into the background over the course of a meal. Amiable, but far from ambient, each sip commands attention, rewarding and refreshing with its brightness. Amazing how this wine is at once linear and defined and simultaneously almost outsized in its fruitiness. Zippy, dry as you could possibly want it to be, but completely not lacking in flavor. Muller-Catoir is a reference for flavor in the Pfalz, as good a snapshot as you will find for how the region's wines should taste.

The Estate... Martin Franzen is the current architect of flavor at Muller-Catoir, which isn’t a bad thing, considering his outsize talent, and the fact that current owner Philipp Catoir is an actual architect by trade. Philipp, along with his father Heinrich, are heirs to a tradition on their estate that stretches back nine generations to 1744, when Catoir stewardship began. It’s easy to understand the attachment to such a place- almond trees, views of the Rhine plain…and 20 hectares loam and loess soil that can yield wines of singular vividness.

The Pfalz... is dotted with great estates. Basserman-Jordan. Von-Buhl. Dr. Deinhard. Maybe above all, Muller-Catoir. There has been a penchant for dry whites made in this area recently, a style perhaps mastered by Hans Gunter Schwarz in his tenure at Muller-Catoir. He's retired now, but the memory of wines that somehow contained all the freshest summer peach aroma any drinker could want with a finish as fine and dry and stony as a perfect Sancerre will persist.