($140; this was harvested a bit riper than the Clos Windbuhl and finished with more alcohol and less residual sugar at 11.3% and 74 g/l) Green-gold. Exotically ripe aromas of pineapple, musky mandarin orange and marzipan. Supersweet and wonderfully intense, with distinctly liqueur-like but still fruit-driven flavors of apricot, marzipan and honey. The inclusion of about 10% healthy grapes (i.e., those not affected by noble rot) added freshness to this wine, said Humbrecht. This has a flamboyant personality and great appeal, yet I suspect it will be even more complex ten years down the road.

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Apricot preserves, candied violets, licorice, marzipan, rowan, gardenia, white raisin, and tangerine mark both the nose and palate of the 2004 Riesling Brand Vendange Tardive, a wine of enormous botrytized ripeness, high acidity, and low alcohol, but in none of these respects quite as extreme as the Clos Windsbuhl. Here there is already elegance, refinement and lift, a ravishing combination of textural richness and palpable extract with delicacy and buoyancy, and an extraordinarily clear, pure finish with a mineral dimension as unmistakable as it is ineffable. Compared with the Clos Windsbuhl, the density here is allied to more winsome creaminess of texture (with patisserie-like flavors of vanilla cream and marzipan), and the finish - while no less penetrating and fresh - caries an intricate interplay of flavors and is not at all severe. This breathtakingly beautiful Riesling is too complex and ravishing today to tell you "wait!- but it can certainly be safely followed for a quarter century."

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Broad and honeyed, yet with a firm structure. Shows a hint of bitterness, like grapefruit peel, pulling it out of balance for now. It's young, so give it time to develop. Long, smoky finish.

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