2006 Riesling Schutt Smaragd

Citrus peel, spice, intense and complex with massive fruit upfront. Lingering and ongoing, with luscious honey and floral characters and a thin slice of slate on the finish too. Impressive! (RH)

The 2006 Riesling Smaragd Schutt leads with apple blossom, musky narcissus, and refreshing grapefruit, lime, and fresh yellow plum. Diverse and elusive mineral shadings are palpable on the palate, beneath a pure, clear torrent of fruit. Faintly pungent smokiness, salinity, crushed stone, and exuberant citrus inform this wine’s formidably long finish. This combines minerality akin in its complexity and persistence to that of the corresponding Kellerberg, with the sheer generosity of fruit found in the Schutt. It will be hard to keep one’s hands off of a corkscrew here, and there is no need to. Nonetheless, I suspect this ravishing Riesling will repay 8-10 years of cellaring. Having finished picking the last day of October makes this by one measure among the earliest harvests on record here, “certainly,” says Knoll, “since the early nineties, anyway.” (In 2003, they began earlier but finished later.) While this year’s Federspiel bottlings were by Knoll’s admission “right on the border” of going over into legal Smaragd territory and required quick action during harvest, they nevertheless retain the requisite sense of lightness and refreshment. But if the harvest was relatively hurried, Knoll’s approach in the cellar was anything but, and none of his 2006 Smaragd had been bottled yet when I tasted them last summer. Importer: Vin Divino, Chicago, IL; tel. (773) 334-6700