One of our favorite stories of finding our everlasting love for Rieslings is this: We decided to drive to the Saar – a river in Germany where great Rieslings grow. Especially one is very famous: Egon Mueller and his Scharzhofberg. This man can ask for 300 Euros for a bottle of Auslese wine – from the latest vintage. And his old Trockenbeerenauslese is trade for more than 12.000 Euros per bottle.
We wanted to look behind the scenes of this winery. We had no clue… Because, this is not how it works with Egon Mueller. After three hours of driving, the door was closed. It didn’t even say Egon Mueller at the door. It said something like “Bishop winery”. Strange… Nothing we could do. The rest of the trip also went quite disappointing. We went to Peter Lauer. Also closed doors!
We decided to go to a fabulous place called Saarburg – a wonderful town with a wonderful wine shop. An insider tip. The place is called “Bonsai and Wine” . It sells all the great Rieslings from the Saar region. A true homecoming. But the prices for Egon Mueller were so high, we couldn’t convince ourselves to buy them. So we bought some other fantastic wines and continued our tour.
A bit unhappy we decided to go to a restaurant which we reserved already earlier. We won't tell you the name. It remains our secret. On the wine menue of this restaurant was an “Egon Mueller Scharzhofberger Auslese 1996” for the Price of only 160 Euros. Still a lot of money, but the perfect opportunity to understand the hype around Egon Mueller. The reason for that was very simple: The daughter of the restaurants owners was born in 1996. That is why they put a lot of 1996 wines into the cellar – selling it for a more than fair price.
And there it was: Our Egon Mueller moment. And we finally got to understand: This riesling is magic. Highest quality. Perfect balance of minerals, sweet and acid components and magic herbal note. After that, we stayed big fans!
