The German wine auctions, held once a year at the end of September (this year, Friday and Sunday, September 20 and 22), are little understood in the U.S.
While the easy selling line is something like, “this is your chance to buy the greatest and rarest wines of Germany” – and that line is 100% true – I think it undermines, or at least takes a detour around, the beautiful human tradition of the event. It pushes to the side what’s really important about all this; like selling the statue of liberty based on the incredible views of the city it affords. We can dig a bit deeper into the immigrant heritage of America, and take a kick-ass selfie of ourselves with NYC as the electric backdrop it is. Let’s do it all.
Before we dive deeper, however, I should state: for those of you who would like to bid, this year vom Boden will be providing bidding, consolidating and importing services for certain estates, including Keller, Lauer, Egon Müller, J.J. Prüm and more.
PLEASE REACH OUT ASAP AS BIDS MUST BE PLACED BY THIS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18TH!
For auction books, basic instructions and more, email info@vomboden.com
As for the history, well, let’s go back a little over a century. As with Burgundy, the Mosel was a land of small farmers and winemakers long before it was a place with wine estates as we currently understand them. Through most of the early 20th century, the majority of winemakers worked their tiny plots, made relatively small amounts of wine in their 1,000L Mosel barrels (referred to as “Fuder”). These winemakers did not sell their wines in bottle; rather they sold these wines, by the barrel, to the negociants and bottlers who would then complete the process, transporting the barrel, bottling it, labeling it, and finally marketing it to the thirsty public.
And here’s the magic: these estates would send their savviest tasters, pros who would stroll through the cellars, tasting barrel by barrel, and buying the best ones – because as anyone who has barrel-sampled knows, each barrel has its own identity. In other words, despite all our scientific advancement and technological sophistication, we have not mastered the complexity of fermentation, the unfathomable influences of a barrel, the life of a certain yeast in a certain year, the indelible fingerprint of terroir. Every barrel is just not created equally, even if the winemaker herself doesn’t know why one tastes different than the other. It just does, and that fact is fucking magical.
Of course, the easy, rational, simple, logical and commercial thing to do, would be to blend all these barrels in a larger tank, averaging out your wine as it were. Frankly, this is what happens 99.9% of the time with winemaking around the world (and there are interesting philosophical arguments as to why this is also a sort of fascinating, beautiful truth).
The German wine auctions, however, represent the 00.1% – the whole process is an acknowledgment of how complicated, mysterious, beautiful and ultimately unknowable, the act – the art – of winemaking really is. It is a nod to the tradition of how wines were discussed and sold before we got so fucking efficient and slick.
You may have gathered this already, but I love it. You want to really geek out? Buy some damn auction wine.
And this should be stated clearly and loudly (now that we’ve done our history lesson): WHILE THERE ARE ALWAYS SOME INCREDIBLY HIGH PRICES PAID, THERE ARE A LOT OF AFFORDABLE WINES SOLD AT THIS AUCTION! This isn’t going to be bargain shopping; but you don’t have to wear an ascot to attend either.
For more information, including auction books, basic bidding instructions and more, email info@vomboden.com