2006 Weiser-Kunstler Enkircher Ellergrub Riesling Spatlese Feinherb

Pears drenched in honey and nut oils and wreathed in herbs and flowers form the delectable subject matter of Weiser and Kunstler’s 2006 Enkircher Ellergrub Riesling Spatlese A.P. #4. Once again, we have some youthful yeastiness in a wine of amazing delicacy, but the flavors are effusive, while the residual sugar is suitably restrained thanks to efficacious acidity (which however is also not in the least blatant). Refreshing lemon and and wet stone add vigor and interest to the finish. I would anticipate the most pleasure from this wine between 7-10 years of age. I sketched the beginnings of Konstantin Weiser’s vineyard-rescue story in issue 167. He and Alexandra Kunstler have now teamed-up at their own cellar, where the 2006s still only represent a beginning of something very exciting, as the pair hone their already manifest skills and enthusiasm, administer tough love to neglected vines, and reclaim other old parcels along along the wall of slate between Enkirch and Starkenburg. This eastern half of one of the Mosel’s notorious oxbows is a treasure trove of once celebrated sites. Since some of the greatest Mosel wines of my life came from here (courtesy of the once venerable estate of Immich-Batterieberg, whose original Ellergrub vineyard Weiser and Kunstler now farm), I can hardly wait! Wieser’s production from 2005 was only a few hundred cases, but happily, even though with all of the selectivity necessary in 2006 he and Kunstler don’t have much more wine, they have picked up as importer one of America’s veteran campaigners. (I mean from back when a handful of us were crying in the wilderness to prepare the way for German Riesling.) From 2007 on, all of the wines will be labeled with both of the proprietors’ names; this year, only a single Spatlese is so-labeled. A Bill Mayer Age of Riesling Selection, imported by Valley View Wine Sales, Glen Ellen, CA; tel. (510) 549-2444