Weingut Clemens-Busch vom grauen Schiefer Riesling Qba Trocken, Mosel, Germany

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The Busch 2008 Riesling trocken Vom Grauen Schiefer represents the latest, re-named version of what was previously his “two-star” Spatlese trocken, but while I was blown away by the quality of the 2007, this 2008 is merely very good. Toasted nuts and lemon in the nose could almost be from a tank-raised white Burgundy; the palate is silken-textured and refreshing, with seemingly tactile impingement of crushed stone; and while the toasted nut, lemon zest, and peach kernel in the finish here generate a bitter impression, that is nicely buffered by the effect of lees and assuaged by juicy primary peach and lemon. I suspect this will be best enjoyed over the next 3-4 years. Clemens Busch – for more about whose impressive efforts in organically farming diverse sites the length of the long, steep Marienburg consult my reports in issues 179 and 185 – pushed many of his 2008s to extremes of dryness or sweetness. The majority of his dry-tasting wines – most of which did not finish fermenting until early summer – were rendered legally trocken (some of them offered as Grosse Gewachse and some to be released late), and while alcohol per se was seldom a problem this year, I found some of these wines austere, inelegant and charmless. (Dry wines here, incidentally, often go through malolactic transformation, but apparently due to such low pHs in 2008, only a single lot did so. There was however, reports Busch, extensive tartrate precipitation, which lowered the levels of tartaric acid, but automatically enhanced the ratio of green apply malic acidity.) This is not to say there aren’t many bottlings I found impressive and even beautiful in the present collection, especially – for those who don’t mind very prominent sweetness – the range of ennobled wines. Busch didn’t even launch his “pre-harvest” passes through the vineyards until nearly mid-October, and began serious harvesting only toward the end of that month, finishing in the third week of November, “but,” as he says, “it was a harvest that demanded a lot of time, because one day you could pick, and the next you had to wait” due to inclement weather, “and the botrytis often developed negatively,” demanding painstaking selection. Apropos the precariousness of Mosel wine culture, here is an amazing statistical anecdote Busch offered. The quality and character of his wines, he believes, is dependent on the high percentage of ancient vines trained in the traditional manner (a.k.a. Stockkultur) to a single stake, with two canes. A single, middle-aged woman who has no protegee is responsible for binding the canes on 80% of Busch’s roughly 25 acres of vines, a talent she acquired out of personal passion, and one that only a handful of even septuagenarian Moselaner any longer possess!Mosel Wine Merchant selections (various importers), Trier, Germany; fax 011 49 (0)651-14551 39; also imported by Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR tel. 888 274 4312