highest Price for „100-Point-Wine“ in Auction
EXTREME SELECTION RESULTS IN EXTREME CONCENTRATION. THE 2015 TBA FROM GUT HERMANNSBERG, HARVESTED FROM OLD VINES IN THE KUPFERGRUBE SITE IS THE PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THIS. WINE CRITIC STEPHAN REINHARDT TASTED IT FOR ROBERT PARKER’S WINE ADVOCATE AND GAVE IT A PERFECT 100 POINTS RATING.
The highest possible score and is rarely given anywhere around the world. For those who know Reinhardt it is crystal clear that a wine’s sweetness alone is never enough. He ascribes the wine enormous depth and intensity, as well as, “divine finesse and an endless finish,” with great precision and minerality.
A total of just twenty-five liters were produced during the 2015 harvest, from the most highly concentrated of all the Gut Hermannsberg’s grapes. One and a half liters of the 236° Oechsle Kupfergrube Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese were bottled in a magnum, the rest in 375ml half-bottles. The single magnum was put up for sale at the traditional VDP auction in September 2017, where it attracted enormous interest. When its lot number was called the bids quickly climbed to stratospheric heights.
‘10,600 Euros – that is crazy!!’ winemaker and GM Karsten Peter was indeed stunned. ‘I never figured on that. Of course I am very glad that this magnificent wine received such a confirmation of its intrinsic value, and that there are people who honor the enormous amount of work and painstaking attention to detail that go in to producing such a rarity as this. Yes, twenty harvesters worked for more than a week in order to select the individual berries for this wine – truly a task for Sisyphus!’
10,600 Euros was the net hammer-price for this exceptional wine. Never before had such a staggering figure been reached at the VDP Nahe auction.
It’s been clear for some time that Gut Hermannsberg and its vineyards are called to greatness as the auction results of the 1960s and 70s made abundantly clear. Back then, the estate was known as the Nahe State Domain, or the Staatliche Weinbaudomäne Niederhausen-Schlossböckelheim in Germany. It was founded as the Royal Prussian Wine Domain, or Königlich-Preussische Weinbaudomäne, in 1902. Its very finest wines were vinified under estate director Hermann Goedecke (active 1948-73 & 1977-78) and his legendary winemaker Karl-Heinz Sattelmeyer (active 1960-86). Further back the record-breaking concentration of 308° Oechsle was recorded by the 1921 Kupfergrube Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese. This wine helped the estate to its breakthrough in Germany.
Since Jens Riedel and Christine Dinse acquired the estate in 2009, the vineyard sites of this historic estate have been carefully and painstakingly brought back into natural balance under winemaker & GM Karsten Peter. Each year the quality level has been raised, and the individual expression of the Rieslings from the estate’s 7 VDP Grosse Lage / “Grand Cru” vineyard sites constantly improves. The 2015 Kupfergrube TBA isn’t the only evidence of this.
Gut Hermannsberg cultivates fully twelve hectares in the south-facing VDP Grosse Lage / ”Grand Cru” Kupfergrube; a steeply sloping vineyard with a soil weathered from a volcanic rock commonly referred to as melaphry (the correct scientific name is andesite). The vineyard takes its name from a former copper mine on the site. Over a hundred years ago untold hours of manual labor turned the craggy scrub-covered hillside into vineyards; an engineering feat comparable with the building of the Eifel Tower. Here the Riesling vines are now up to seventy years of age. Each year the estate’s top dry white wine comes from this extraordinary site: the Kupfergrube GG / “Grand Cru”. It is in only exceptional vintages like 2015 that this marvelous vineyard produces a tiny volume of nobly sweet rarities.
ABOUT THE VDP AUCTIONS:
The VDP auctions are an institution for wine lovers and collectors of the finest German wines dating back to 1910. Their focus doesn’t only lie on the best lots of wine from the current vintage, but also rarities come under the hammer in Mid-September each year on the Mosel and the Nahe, in the Rheingau also in the spring. The prices reached depend on many factors including the number of bottles and their size. The magnum of 2015 Kupfergrube TBA that was sold on the 17th September 2017 in Bad Kreuznach for Euro 12,614 including tax and buyers commission was definitely one of the most expensive wines ever sold at a VDP auction.