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Quality Riesling Spatlese Wine Has Fascinating Roots
The 2005 Gunderloch Estate Riesling Spatlese (late harvest) wine is certainly worth buying andappreciating not only because of its undoubted class but the interesting story of its earlybeginnings. Gunderloch Estate formed in 1890 by a banker named Carl Gunderloch whopurchased the "Gunderloch" manor house in Nackenheim, Germany.The roots of this Riesling wine begin with the story of Carl Gunderloch who it is believed used to trek from Gundersblum, the town where he was born situated on the left bank of the Rhineapproximately 25 km south, to his bank in Mainz. On his daily travels he astutely observed howthe sun played off the hills all along the Rhein Terrace, an area that can trace its first vineyardsback to around 20 B.C. and is ringed by protective hills and forest. These observations inspiredhim to purchase vineyard property that appeared to collect the most sunlight. Today the estate, asa result of these astute acquisitions, unquestionably holds the best vineyards in one of the mostcelebrated wine villages of the Rheinhessen (Rheinhessen, the largest of 13 regions largelydevoted to vineyards producing German wine, Riesling among them). Varied soils and favorableclimate make it possible to grow many different grape varieties.
The Gunderloch Estate has an interesting tie to the German dramatist Carl Zuckmayer.
 Zuckmayer (Zuckmeyer, Zuckmeier), who became a Hollywood screenwriter, was born inNackenheim (in Rheinhessen) on 12-27-1896, the second son of a cork manufacturingindustrialist and his wife Amalie. When he was four years old, the Zuckmayer family moved toMainz and became a friend of Carl Gunderloch.Carl Zuckmayer, German screenwriter, playwright, essayist and poet, began writing lyric poetryand then plays. By the 1920s, Zuckmayer was hailed the successor to dramatist GerhartHauptmann. His most successful works included comedies which drew upon German folktraditions, like
The Merry Vineyard 
;
The Captain from Köpenick,
which was twice filmed in 1931and 1956; and
The Devil's General 
(1946), which became a German film nine years later,portraying the dilemma of an anti-Nazi German army officer and satires on the militarism of NaziGermany. Zuckmayer used the Gunderloch Estate for the setting and Carl Gunderloch as themain character for his very first play "Der froehliche Weinberg" (
The Merry Vineyard 
). In this play,Zuckmayer renamed Carl Gunderloch "Jean Baptiste" which is where the brand name used onthe Gunderloch "Jean Baptiste" Kabinett is borrowed from. He also wrote the German screenplayfor 
The Blue Angel 
in 1930 that brought fame to Marlene Dietrich.Because his mother had been a Jew, Zuckmayer found himself persecuted by the Nazis. After Hitler banned his plays, Zuckmayer moved to Austria and began writing a few screenplays for British films. In 1938, he fled to France and emigrated to the U.S. where he began teachingplaywriting at the New York New School for Social Research.
The only winemaker ever to receive a perfect 100 points score for three wines.
In 1920, Gunderloch transferred the estate to his granddaughter Elisabeth Usinger and her husband Dr. Franz Usinger. They managed the estate until 1965 when their son Carl Otto tookover. Today, the estate is managed by Carl Otto’s oldest daughter Agnes Hasselbach-Usinger andher husband, Fritz Hasselbach, a viticultural engineer and highly accredited winemaker. FritzHasselbach has been the only winemaker ever to receive a perfect 100 points score for not onlyone, but three of his wines. The 1992, 1996 and 2001 Riesling TBA, Nackenheimer Rothenbergwere each awarded with 100 points by
Winespectator Magazine
in 2002. Hasselbach wasresponsible for the purchase of two top Niersteiner vineyards, Hipping and Pettenthal, bothplanted to Riesling to add to the wine estate's holdings.The property in the Rothenberg (65% of the estate's 28 acres of vineyards holdings) andEngelsberg vineyards, consisting of 24 acres planted with Riesling, Silvaner, Ruländer and
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harryo

Well this is a start. Lots of details. Got so much to learn, but I want to champion this.

reply03 / 11 / 2008
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