2011 Eitelsbacher Karthauserhofberg Spatlese

Harboring 9.3% alcohol – even after having left behind 73 grams of residual sugar – Tyrell’s 2011 Eitelsbacher Karthauserhofberg Riesling Spatlese is brimming with lusciously juicy apple, Persian melon, and quince. Soft in feel, it finishes with a somewhat blurry impression of very ripe fruit without counterpoint or significant refreshment. But winsome suggestions of peony and rose perfume well up as it opens to the air, and on balance this will prove quite attractive for solo drinking through at least 2018. Christoph Tyrell and cellarmaster-vineyard manager Christian Vogt’s team began picking astonishingly early in 2011: September 5th for Pinot Blanc and the 13th for Riesling, finishing up already on October 18. Vogt notes that this year he let residual sugar approach the legal limit in the estate’s trocken offerings, in an effort to moderate their levels of alcohol. Fortunately, the acidity of the botrytis-free Karthauserhof 2011s – though analytically relatively low – proved efficacious, thus helping preserve a dry taste among wines that harbored judicious residual sugar. Legally dry wines have always been Tyrells’ personal preference and consequently a category on which he places special emphasis. If the material that informs such wines were to lack purity or focus, it would be immediately evident. But it must be said that much of what underlay this year’s off-dry and residually sweet Karthauserhof bottlings was manifestly less pristine or potentially intriguing, a fact that is not hidden by their residual sugar. This year’s array of separate Auslese bottlings is even more numerous than that of the past two vintages. “Some years,” explains Vogt, “we’re of the opinion that there aren’t any great differences from one lot of Auslese to another and we bottle them blended together. But with these 2011s, we were convinced that each was distinct in character.” A similar opinion no doubt underlies the present collection’s unprecedentedly numerous B.A.s and T.B.A.s. As Vogt points out, “Even from the analyses you can see that each one of them represents a step up in concentration,” but he adds that the estate’s 200th anniversary of (Leornardy-Rautenstrauch-Tyrell) family ownership was also an influential factor. Even more astonishing to me than their sheer numbers is the fact that all of these B.A.s and T.B.A.s were bottled already in February following the vintage, which I suspect is also without precedent. (Twenty-five liters of T.B.A. from the same must that informed this year’s auction-bound “Nr. 51” represented the sole hold-out, and were still fermenting as of last autumn.) Importers: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. (800) 596-9463 (though only through vintage 2011), Winesellers, Ltd., Niles, IL; tel. (847) 647-1100