The sweetness of Weingart’s 2009 Schloss Furstenberg Riesling Eiswein approaches treacle on account of its combination of high residual sugar with acidity below the Eiswein norm. Thankfully, a streak of salinity helps stimulate salivation and offset some of the sense of sucrosity. Dried dates and figs, peach preserves, and caramel offer a low-toned character more associated with botrytis than frost, an impression underscored by this elixir’s near buttery texture. Long and soothing as well as almost weightlessly buoyant, here is one “dessert wine” I would actually recommend trying to pair with desserts, but I’d suggest anticipating ten or a dozen year’s service, and not more. This was picked December 20, and temperatures in the Hamm were – as along most of the Rhine and Mosel – very cold, so cold in fact that Weingart said executing the pressing was technically challenging. But this seems to have been an instance where 2009 fruit was already so ripe it could only be modestly impacted by even a deep freeze.For notes on some recent developments at Florian Weingart’s estate, please consult my report in issue 187. While much has been done to improve vineyards and cellar, this young grower’s acute self-awareness and quality-consciousness continue as they have since he took over here, even as he has become one of his country’s most talked-about talents. And he would be the last to want readers to remain unaware that the wines rendered here when his father, Adolf, was in charge – of which I recently tasted a fresh, minerally-intense example that I had imported from the difficult 1987 vintage – were consistently good and often downright distinguished. Weingart reports some drought stress in 2009, but while he began picking already before mid October, Oechsle levels were universally high, which explains not only the relatively high alcohol of some of the dry wines (a phenomenon that’s been witnessed in these vineyards in quite a few recent vintages) but the lack of differentiation by that metric between those wines Weingart chose to bottle as Kabinett and those that became Spatlese. Acid levels were on the whole modest, on top of which several of Weingart’s 2009s – including a couple of the ones I thought among his finest, please note! – underwent at least partial malo-lactic transformation.Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300