2007 Scharzhofberger Spatlese

Malt, honey, and hazelnut cream as well as an oily texture and custard-like richness all point to the botrytis element of Kesselstatt’s 2007 Scharzhofberger Riesling Spatlese. For a relatively soft and clearly ennobled Riesling, this preserves a lovely sense of clarity, displaying saline, peach kernel, and brown spice nuances in its long, luscious finish. I would not hesitate to plan on holding this for the better part of two decades, in the course of which it will probably overtake the corresponding Kabinett in complexity. A protracted harvest is almost bound to be especially beneficial for an estate with such enormous and widely-scattered vine acreage as that of von Kesselstatt. The acidity in this year’s collection is almost uniformly ripe, and often noticeably low. As usual, a certain austerity accrues to a fair share of Kesslestatt’s many trocken Rieslings (wines from whose labels the last vestiges of Pradikat designations have now disappeared), but happily, alcoholic heat was scarcely a problem here this year. Interestingly, the Saar wines among these were generally especially successful regardless of style. Annegret Reh’s plan in the Kabinett segment, incidentally, is to eventually eliminate the redundancy of having both feinherb (successors to former halbtrocken) and unabashedly sweet bottlings from a single site, but instead work in the direction of merely discreet – i.e. feinherb – sweetness for most of the estate’s Kabinetts. In a sweet style, the Kesselstatt Kabinetts have consistently represented excellent values with ready market-availability, whereas few of the drier Kabinetts (and virtually none of the estate’s trocken Rieslings) seem to make it to the U.S. Various importers including: P. J. Valckenberg International, Tulsa, OK; tel (918) 622-0424.