2011 Brauneberger Juffer Spatlese

Ripe white peach, Persian melon and papaya wreathed in bittersweet floral perfume mark the Haag 2011 Brauneberger Juffer Riesling Spatlese as a multi-dimensional marriage of northerly and tropical fruits with floral, herbal and mineral complexities. Silken in texture and mingled with piquant, smoky, rich nut oils as well as a liquid floral perfume, this delivers a combination of levity with lusciousness, opulence and wafting elegance, and textural richness with tingling enervation, that are hard to beat; and an alliance with wet stone and saliva-drawing salinity serves to enhance a sense of depth, dynamic, and mouthwatering enticement to take the next sip. Look for at least two decades of delight. “We started picking at the beginning of October,” relates Oliver Haag “because must weights were already high for Kabinett, but there was good acidity.” Haag pressed whole clusters rather than either crushing or permitting skin contact for his dry wines, and tended to favor a higher percentage of stainless steel for vinification and elevage because, as he puts it, “the material was all so ripe that I was worried it would come off as too opulent and voluminous.” Without question, he thereby puts his finger on a legitimate concern, and his own wines illustrate the truth that higher alcoholic volume and opulence – no matter what appears on the Riesling’s label – aren’t necessarily virtues, and in particular not in the context of this vintage. “To convey a sense of levity this year,” notes Haag, “was not so easy. Not that there was much botrytis out there,” he adds, though fortunately that fact did not deter him from rendering several spectacular ennobled wines in small volumes. Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. (800) 596-9463