2011 Forster Kirchenstuck Trockenbeerenauslese

Four decades after the last wine so-labeled, Bassermann-Jordan’s 2011 Forster Kirchenstuck Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese was arrested in fermentation (in February) with a mere 6% alcohol and bottled in July. Scents and flavors of peach preserves, candied lemon rind dominate, with hints of musk and sweat lending a site-typically mysterious animality, and a saliva-inducing streak of salinity helping to balance out this still-embryonic elixir’s sheer richness and viscosity. The texture here goes beyond creamy to buttery, yet the sense of energy and sheer primary juiciness that informed the present collection’s two B.A.s, is present here, too. A touch of white pepper serves for invigorating sizzle in a sensationally sustained finish. This is almost surely one for the ages – so no matter what yours is, be thinking about your heirs! Furthermore, it’s almost unfair to rate it as I have felt compelled to do, because almost certainly – formidable though it already is – much more clearly defined complexity lies in the future. There are, alas, a mere 120 liters. Director Gunter Hauck greeted me with a nearly complete collection of Ulrich Mell’s 2011s – and what a collection! Regrettably, I have repaid his generosity – after having had to accept significant gaps in tasting a number of recent line-ups – by being delayed in publishing these tasting notes on them and many of their vintage 2010 predecessors. Although picking of Riesling in 2011 began here already in the first week of September – to insure “crunchy” acidity – due to those instances where a second budding had followed May frost, certain sites did not ripen fully or get picked until late October and early November, making this one of the longest harvests on record at Bassermann-Jordan. In general, remarks Hauck “we had no difficulty achieving 90 Oechsle in Riesling and could have had more, but we preferred to harvest a little earlier here and there to insure good acidity so that in twenty years there will still be some Spiel to the wines.” Late picking was also what enabled Auslese, Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese to be selected in Hohenmorgen, unprecedented for at this address, not to mention the estate’s first smidgeon of Kirchenstuck T.B.A. since 1971. Often the purest botrytis is that which comes early, but in these instances its late appearance dazzled. Even so, Hauck notes that “if we hadn’t been required” – i.e. for the sake of the Grosse Gewachse – “to do a double selection, we would not have had this phalanx of botrytis wines.” And speaking of rarities, I tasted one promising example from 2011 of those (non-Riesling!) experiments that the team here is conducting with skin maceration and “orange” vinification in amphora. After the almost universal penury of 2010 (which chez Bassermann worked out to just 29 hectoliters per hectare overall), 2011 featured frost in many of the estate’s lower-lying vineyards, so that the volume of generic bottlings was especially reduced. (There was so little Auf der Mauer Riesling in 2010 that I wasn’t offered an opportunity to taste it.) In a sign of the times, with the exception of one generic Riesling bottling from purchased fruit that I did not taste, the 2010 and 2011 collections here are made-up entirely of either legally trocken or unabashedly sweet wines (which in 2010 “begin” with Auslese). Incidentally, a rather garish new variation on this estate’s art nouveau label now graces most of its Rieslings. And in another labeling change, the capital “S” was dropped with 2011 from those dry Rieslings where it had over the last couple of vintages appeared – writ rather large – in apparent allusion to “selection,” or perhaps “superior.” Importer: Importer: Magellan Wine Imports, Inc., Centennial, CO; tel. (720) 272-6544