2011 Bockenauer Felseneck Spatlese Goldkapsel

Sappy nectarine and white peach are enthrallingly infused with floral and herbal essences as well as a striking black raspberry note (seemingly replete with seedy crunch) in Schafer-Frohlich’s 2011 Bockenauer Felseneck Riesling Spatlese gold capsule, which was rendered from must actually a little lower in Oechsle than that which informed the corresponding “regular” Spatlese. It does harbor higher residual sugar, but thanks to imponderable factors – acid and extract being nearly the same – tastes less sweet. (Frohlich says he anticipated finding further lots that distinguished themselves as meriting blending into a wine of gold capsule designation, but in the final analysis there was only this one.) A custardy rich texture delightfully supports mid-palate hints of nut paste, but levity and juiciness plus piquancy of pits and seeds ward-off any sense of confection in an enthrallingly dynamic, mouthwatering finish. Look for at least a couple of decades of delight. “It took four weeks just for this just to get started fermenting,” notes Frohlich by way of suggesting the challenge and risk involved in spontaneity, “so you can’t let yourself become nervous. But then, if it’s perfect material” – and in this case, botrytis-free – “you don’t need to be. This wine though is pretty much at the limit of richness you can achieve with healthy grapes or ferment spontaneously.” Tim Frohlich began harvesting not long after the beginning of October, 2011 and finished (with his Grosse Gewachse) by the end of that month, a timetable he had already predicted when I met with him in late August. “Dry conditions and above all the low nighttime temperatures were enormously important in 2011, and distinguished it from other warm, early vintages,” opines Frohlich, adding that “vintage 2003 was the most important of my life, because I learned not to panic but to wait; and those grapes that were harvested latest were the best.” Frohlich reports very little botrytis at any point during his 2011 harvest, so that nobly sweet wines were produced only in unusually small quantities; by dint of especially rigorous selection, and as much from spontaneously shrunken (tiny to begin with), healthy, super-ripe berries. “I had thirty pickers,” relates Frohlich (for more of whose observations consult the general introduction to this report) “twice our normal crew, with six or seven people – ladies who had long fingernails – doing nothing but picking-out raisins.” He’s quick to add that scarce though those overripe or botrytized berries were, even a small number left in the material utilized for a Grosses Gewachs could easily have driven alcohol levels well over Frohlich’s roughly 13% target, to say nothing of possible effects on purity of fruit, precision of flavors, and minerality, all virtues that – like other recent Schaefer-Frohlich collections – these 2011s possess in spades. The fruit that informed this year’s remarkable Schaefer-Frohlich Grosse Gewachse was in his words “tiny, golden yellow, glowing, and knackig” – crunchy, i.e., with skins possessed of the requisite firmness, to capture only the positive aspects of which, he personally manned the presses to insure precise control over every last 2011 lot. “You could get heartburn contemplating spontaneous fermentation in a low-acid vintage like this,” notes Frohlich, who nowadays only rarely resorts to cultured yeasts, “but thankfully, the pH levels were relatively high,” which greatly increases a grower’s margin of safety. Judging by the results, everything went off with nary a hitch! Imported by Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. 800 596 9463