Clemens Busch Pundericher Marienburg Riesling Spatlese Gold Capsule

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Having noted that Busch’s Marienburg Kabinett is of the sort I would feel more comfortable calling “Spatlese,” it will probably come as no surprise to readers when I say that his 2009 Pundericher Marienburg Riesling Spatlese gold capsule – harvested alongside that Kabinett and ahead of the regular picking from gray slate slopes, but here culling the ca. 40% dryly-botrytized bunches affected by stem rot – is “really” an Auslese. As Busch points out, this deteriorative affliction of a cluster’s lifeline (as a result of which it will fall to the ground and rot totally if not “rescued”) has a particular tendency to promote desiccation and concentrate acids. Candied lemon, honey, talcum, vanilla, and hints of caramelized peach in the nose are prelude to a palate performance of bright intensity, even a bit of sharpness and dried peach concentration. There is also an admirable sense of richness allied to delicacy and a successful standoff between residual sugar and acidity. What this lacks vis-a-vis its “regular” Spatlese counterpart is the sheer lusciousness, purity, dynamic complexity of that wine. “It was no lovely autumn,” notes Clemens Busch candidly. “We had to pick our botrytis wines very early. We had regular rain from the end of October on, and one really had to take great advantage of the dry days to finish.” Busch reports that while his lower-tier lots largely fermented unproblematically to dryness, his riper single-vineyard bottlings were sluggish, several ending up in the legally halbtrocken territory that I have personally tended to prefer at this address, not least because of the tendency for the trocken lots to betray elevated alcohol. Busch – for more about whose methods, style, and vineyards consult the estate introductions as well as the tasting notes in others of my recent Mosel reports – is unwilling to employ cultured yeasts or otherwise intervene to achieve legal dryness. In view of an unfounded and frankly uninformed phobia many Riesling lovers have when it comes to the very idea, it should be pointed out that most of Busch’s dry-tasting Rieslings have since 2001 undergone malo-lactic transformation. That did not however happen with his 2008s (whose high pH levels precluded it) and only selectively with these 2009s. Furthermore, in Busch’s cellar, this transformation – normally not profound, as his ripe fruit is typically not high in malic acid – generally takes place as an interruption during – rather than subsequent to – the alcoholic fermentation. This peculiarity, he contends, explains the absence of diacetyl or other problematic potential byproducts. Even the lighter cuvees here were not bottled until the three weeks leading up to my mid-September visit, and among those wines then being prepped for bottling were a Felsterrasse and Raffes too shaken-up from filtration for me to judge. That the nobly sweet wines here are as notable for their high quality as their abundance I suppose doesn’t need repeating, provided you survey my ratings.Mosel Wine Merchant Trier, Germany (various importers); tel. (413) 429-6176; +49 (0) 651 14551 38; also imported by Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR tel. 888 274 4312