1998 Hermann Ludes
Riesling Thörnicher Ritsch QbA Trocken

...yup, a dry QbA. (What's a QbA? And why is this wine actually a Kabinett Trocken even though it's labeled as a QbA? German wine law, I love you! See below for all the answers, if you care. Also feel free to ignore.)

Not that a QbA (or a Kabinett) is all that rare, in any form. What is rare is a QbA from one of the Mosel's top producers and top sites (this is a single-vineyard wine), at well over a quarter-century of development, perfectly aged in the cellar.

That is very rare.

As I wrote in the back-vintage Kabinett Halbtrocken offer in October 2024: "Finding the absolute rarest German dessert wines is actually quite easy. Wine-Searching "Egon TBA" one comes across nineteen unique offerings, starting in the $7K-range for the half-bottle (if of interest)."

"On the other hand, finding any bottles of old Kabinett, whether regular, Halbtrocken, or Trocken, is nearly impossible and normally a lucky, chance occurrence."

Old Kabinett Trockens and single-vineyard QbAs are a passion of mine. Normally, if I'm at any estate, I ask about old dry wines, just for the tasting experience. With the Ludes, Julian Ludes just brought it up for me to taste. What can I say: Julian gets me. (See photo of Julian, in his cellar, above.)

And so here we are.

So what does this wine taste like? I understand that most people do not have that much experience with aged Mosel dry wines. And the truth is, compared to the 1994 Becker Kabinett Halbtrocken we offered earlier in 2024, this wine is much more severe.

I guess this is the right place for a "buyer beware" warning: Obviously we want to sell you wines we're excited about, but we also want you to enjoy, or at least to learn from, the wines we sell. This wine honestly might not be for everyone. I think it's a worthy experience, worth the gamble, but that's a personal decision you have to make.

The Mosel is a serious landscape and the thrill of the best wines is the sharpness, that razor's edge between pleasure and pain, sugar and acidity. In a wine like this, we have only around 3 grams of sugar matched to an acidity that is nearly 7 grams (this is dry, dry, dry, and only around 10% alcohol).

Could we call this wine "sour"? I don't personally think so, but maybe. If you've had older dry wines from the Ruwer (Karthäuserhof or Von Schubert from the 1980s or 1990s) then you get the vibe here. For me the word is tart, or brisk?

For me, I love the pine-needle greenness of the wine, the quinine-like, bitter herbal edge, the subterranean minerality, the rawness of the citrus, both green and yellow, lime and lemon, pithy and searing. The vintage - 1998 - would probably have been considered "classic" back in the day? By today's standards it was downright cold. It's a curious fact that the more structured, more acidic vintages, tend to age into something graceful. They remain somehow (nearly) forever young.

The most delicate dry wines of the Mosel get as close to my Platonic ideal of what a white wine can be: mineral water with all the simple-yet-overwhelming refreshment that "mineral water" implies, simply filtered through the vine and the grape.

If "from dust to dust" sums up the human experience at its most elemental, perhaps for wine the phrase should be, "from water to water."

The 1998 Ludes is not a showy wine, it is not a loud wine, it is not a layered nor glycerin-rich wine. It is wine-as-water, wine-as-vapor. It is wine as it might taste bubbling up from a freshwater spring, deep in a shadow-dappled pine forest.

In some ways, despite its complexity, this is a simple wine of refreshment with the magic that comes from age, the polish and satiny, almost transparent and translucent veneer that time bestows on quality wine, buried deep in a cold cellar.

If you do decide to try a bottle, please let us know what you think! If you have a cellar, please feel free to age this for another 10+ years with no problem.

Thank you for your support!

Stephen and Robert

What is a QbA?
The acronym stands for "Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete," meaning a "quality wine of an official grape-growing region." People will often just short-hand it: Qualitätswein. From the widest angle, this is the middle-level quality of German wine, above basic "Landwein" and below the higher "Prädikats" level. Qualitätswein must come from a recognized region, must have a ripeness level between 51 and 72 Oechsle (between 12.5 and 17.5 Brix), though a Qualitätswein can be chaptalized. (Oy vey, what is Chaptalization? See below.) In short, winemakers use this category of wines for wines that 1) don't have the ripeness levels of the "better" Prädikatswein (a Kabinett must have a ripeness level of at least 67 Oechsle), or 2) for wines they just think aren't quite as good as the Prädikatswein, or 3) for wines that don't fit into their Prädikat-lineup for the vintage, or 4) for wines that they have chaptalized. In the case of this Ludes QbA, it could legally be called a "Kabinett Trocken" because the ripeness was well above 67 Oechsle and it was not chaptalized. They chose to "declassify" the wine because they had three other Kabinett Trockens in the vintage and needed a different category of wine to offer in the vintage's lineup, simple as that.

What is Chaptalization?
This is the process of adding sugar to unfermented grape juice (the must), not to make the finished wine sweeter, but to increase the alcohol in the finished wine. A basic formula for fermentation would be that the yeasts eat the sugar in the must and produce alcohol. Therefore, the more sugar in the must, the more alcohol in the finished wine.

This offer is now closed. If you need help finding the wines please email orders@sourcematerialwine.com.