2005 Graacher Himmelreich Spatlese

The Prum 2005 Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Spatlese smells of talcum and lemon and black raspberry candies. Creamy and faintly oily in texture and impressively clinging in its citrus, berry, vanilla, and wet stone character, this rich Spatlese preserves invigorating fresh fruit acidity even as it nods subtly in a caramelized, honeyed direction. “We made what I think was the right decision to harvest relatively early,” says Manfred Prum, before botrytis became the most prominent element in the wines’ character as in his opinion had been the case in 1976. Still, the Prums were blessed this year with terrific quality but cursed with a dearth of material that could legitimately be bottled even as Spatlese let alone Kabinett. (Note: There is usually more than one bottling and therefore more than one eventual A.P. number chez Prum for any given Kabinett or non-auction Spatlese and even some Auslesen. The differences in character, they promise, are kept to a minimum, and indeed in many cases it is a matter of the same base wine temporarily stored in more than one tank. For that reason, I was as usual not privy to the A.P. numbers of the un-bottled, non-auction wines that I tasted.) Various importers including P. J. Valckenberg International, Tulsa, OK; tel. (918) 622-0424 and Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. (800) 596-9463