2007 Bernkasteler Badstube Auslese

Yeasty, fermentative notes to some extent shroud the true aromas of the Prums’ 2007 Bernkasteler Badstube Riesling Auslese, which with patience reveals high-toned herbal essences, fresh lime, and gardenia. In the mouth this is intensely saline and lime-fruited, making for a refreshing and enervating character one seldom finds at Auslese level, and that offers dynamic counterpoint to the wine’s wafting floral notes and its rich flavors of cherry preserve and honey. As Manfred Prum is the first to point out, this Auslese is more than a little Saar-like. It also finishes straight and penetrating as an arrow, with suggestions of peat, salt, and wet stone adding a fascinating mineral dimension. The characteristics of great Riesling from the Prum estate coincide with one of the most striking virtues of 2007 Mosel Rieslings in general, namely the ability to combine intensity of aroma and flavor with delicacy, and caressing richness with vivacity. In a sense, the best wines in this year’s collection are like Prum-squared in their distinctiveness and expressivity. Manfred Prum acknowledges good reasons for the widespread comparison of 2007 with 2004, and thinks the present vintage also shares the richness of 2005. Notoriously little attention is paid at this address to dry-tasting wines, and I was unfortunately not able to taste either a Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Spatlese trocken or a Bernkasteler Badstube Spatlese feinherb. Nobly sweet wines which I have not yet tasted include Wehlener Sonnenuhr auction Spatlese, gold capsule Auslese, and Beerenauslese; a Graacher Himmelreich long gold capsule Auslese, and a Bernkasteler Badstube Eiswein. Various importers including: P. J. Valckenberg International, Tulsa, OK; tel 918 622 0424 and Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA 800 596 9463