2006 Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Spatlese

Destined for auction, Molitor’s 2006 Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Riesling Spatlese A.P. #23 was harvested after the A.P.#22, and more selectively. Gardenia and honey-tone on the nose combine with creamy, nutty, apple-y flavors along with a more vivid wet stone slate character. Some yeasty fermentative notes are still clinging but should soon dissipate. This has the best of both worlds: the seductive perfume of A.P.#22 with more acidity, more concentrated dried fruit character, deeper creamy richness, and more minerality. It might lack the effortless, pitch-perfect balance of some of Molitor’s wines, and its prominent sweetness – together with its richness – certainly would have led me to call it “Auslese,” which it of course is by law. Still, there is elegance, purity, and fluidity and as this evolves in the open glass the wealth of nuances – flower, spice, nut, pit fruit, and mineral – accumulates a convincing case both for short term improvement, and 20 years or more of felicitous bottle evolution. For details on the supremely ambitious and diligent Markus Molitor’s often unorthodox practices and unprecedented estate management, readers are urged to consult issue 167. I confess to having experienced trepidation approaching his wines in this vintage, since they are characteristically relatively creamy, opulent, soft, and full by Mosel standards, traits which it seemed possible could be exaggerated by the vintage character of 2006. Furthermore, here is a vintner who from 2005 vinified ten Beerenauslesen (only three of which I had yet tasted) and eleven Trockenbeerenauslesen (none of which had remotely finished fermenting when I visited in late summer 2006)! Molitor’s average yields and must weights were almost laughably extreme. Despite the rampant rot and stratospheric sugars “I utilized no charcoal, no bentonite, no cultured yeasts, not a single gram,” he asserts. “My opinion is, that wines made this year utilizing these materials – and that is the vast majority – may taste fine now, but they’ll lack the requisite structure to have a future.” His new, computer-controlled basket press was perfectly suited to drawing pure juice from tiny quantities of desiccated berries, “and I ended up putting the entire harvest from 89 acres in 20 sites through it, of course with my own program. We expanded the crew to more than 60 pickers this year, but still with our size we lacked enough time to linger over many vineyards.” The result was fewer wines of “normal” predicates than I had imagined. Although the number of B.A.s and T.B.A.s to be declared was not divulged – and some were certainly not ready to taste last year – 50% of the crop, Molitor says, could have been declared as Beerenauslese! As to my concerns about how 2006 would fare precisely at this address, they could scarcely have been less well founded. Importer: Schmitt Soehne, Millersville, MD; tel. (410) 729-4083