2007 Hexamer, Helmut - Meddersheimer Rheingrafenberg Riesling Spatlese*

A three star 2007 Meddersheimer Rheingrafenberg Riesling Spatlese – picked late in the Eisendell, at a mere 7.5% alcohol and correspondingly well more than 100 grams residual sugar – is in all but name Auslese, although Hexamer hastens to note that there was very little botrytis on these tiny, golden berries that represented his first crop from a new planting. Mandarin orange, caramel apple, and yellow plum preserves are featured on a gorgeously honey-tinged nose and creamy palate. Here, too, Hexamer’s high-wire act manages to keep sweetness in check, aided not only by abundant ripe acidity, but by stimulating salinity and a core of fresh pit fruits that emerges from all of the jam-like, honeyed richness. One of this estate’s finest wines to date, this should age well for a quarter century. Representing 600 liters of late-picked, nobly-rotten fruit, Harald Hexamer is still exploring both his style and his recently much-expanded vineyard acreage. The plethora of non-Riesling grapes here (both red and white) – and Hexamer’s free-wheeling experiments with these – are often very popular with his customers, but the time they steal from focus on his line-up of Rieslings (not all of the huge number of which I tasted) might not be to his long-term advantage. (Even the large share of Schlossbockelheimer in den Felsen that Hexamer acquired from the Paul Anheuser estate is planted – in its red sandstone as opposed to porphyric sections – with Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris.) Surprisingly, it is Hexamer’s typically expansive range of high-residual sugar and nobly sweet wines that seems to be garnering the most attention for his talents in the German press, but the best of his dry Rieslings continue to be promising, too. A number of the wines this year – and increasingly in vintage 2008 – were permitted to at least begin their fermentations spontaneously, which was sometimes evident in a bit of initial funk or reduction in the nose. Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300