2017 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spatlese

Ripe pear and apple are seductively garlanded in freesia and honeysuckle on an utterly enticing nose. These transform on a delicate, subtly creamy palate into luscious fruit succulence and seductive liquid perfume. Piquant hints of apple and pear seeds serve for understated counterpoint and salinity lends salivary stimulation on a wafting, consummately refreshing and memorably persistent finish. From 1973, Willi Schaefer rendered a transcendently elegant Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese (today he would have labeled it “Spätlese”) with which the two of us stole the show in a mid-1980s tasting to which a formidable cast of Mosel and Ruwer vintners had brought mostly their Auslesen from the celebrated 1975 and 1976 vintages. This 2017 might well be his estate’s finest Wehlener since.