2009 Rheinhessen Alte Reben La Borne Auction

The Wittmann 2009 Riesling Alte Reben La Borne represents just under a thousand auctioned bottles (from a single Stuckfass) – legally trocken though not so-labeled – grown in the upper elevations of the Morstein and a parcel for which he chose the presumably original French name that subsequently passed into local dialect and which alludes to a large stone boundary marker. Pear, pear pip, nut oils, and iodine intrigue in the nose. A silken, glycerin-rich palate offers ample primary fruit sap and a distinctive sense of chalk and variegated crustacean shell suffusion. This finishes with striking persistence of piquant nuttiness; luscious pear and peach; cyanic bitterness; and the aforementioned, fascinating mineral diversity. It ought to be utterly captivating to follow over the coming decade. “The fruit was picture perfect,” says Philipp Wittmann of his 2009 crop in general, and he managed to capture ripe, complex flavors largely without the alcoholic interference or austerity that have sometimes led me to express reservations about the widely-lauded Rieslings of this articulate, conscientious young biodynamic practitioner. Wittmann characterized his harvest as having occupied “the last half of October, followed by a week of playing around (‘Spielerei’)” that focused on a few cooler sites. His approach was to see to it that the wines fermented quickly so as to avoid any bacteriological issues such as inadvertent malo-lactic transformation, but thereafter to give the young wines extended stays on their fine lees. Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700