2009 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spätlese

Whew, was that a close call! Offered at auction, the Schaefer 2009 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spatlese A.P. #4 is scented and flavored with pink grapefruit, blood orange, cassis, and nut oils; offers a more compact, firm impression than its two immediate siblings; and features as well a haunting smokiness of black tea and pungency of citrus zests that help offer counterpoint to its rich fruit and nuts. While this is impressively sappy and persistent, I don’t envision it ever quite achieving the dynamic, interactive, irresistible personality of the A.P. #10. But it needs time to show itself, and I am sure it will not perish for at least another quarter-century. “The berries here were so tiny and concentrated,” observes Willi Schaefer, “and guaranteed such freshness and liveliness, that one could comfortably include a bit of botrytis in the mixture” and still call it “Spatlese.” It may be that a certain standoff between high acid and botrytized material – along with the wine’s sheer density – are what render this marginally less expressive today than a few of the other best wines of the present collection. Most of the harvest of 2009 here was accomplished during the second half of October. "We'd actually reckoned with an earlier start," remarks Christophe Schaefer, "but although the grapes looked beautiful, when we tasted them we thought, 'no we really need to – and we can – wait.'" "The grapes were very stable," adds Willi Schaefer, "and when we did get botrytis – encouraged by a bit of October rain – it dried up nicely. And when you get this sort of late botrytis, it can really concentrate already high acids." Furthermore, parcels in Graach had retained their foliage after the one-night cold snap in early October. All of this year's wines remained on their fine lees at least through March, and the Schaefers pointed out that choices about which to bottle at what Pradikat level were usually made only from cask as the wines evolved, since with the exception of late pickings notably influenced by botrytis, the character of fruit was remarkably uniform. Another feature of 2009 that the Schaefers emphasized was high skin-to-juice ratios, something I certainly thought discernable even before they mentioned this. As a result their yields ended up being even lower than they had been anticipated on the basis of eyeballing and measuring the incoming volume of grapes. Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300