Immich-Batterieberg Enkircher Zeppwingert Riesling

點(diǎn)擊次數(shù)：1868

From a portion of its Einzellage immediately adjacent to the Batterieberg and from which Kollmann did not bottle a separate wine in 2009, a 2010 Enkircher Zeppwingert Riesling displays not only the combination of palpable extract-richness with levity and energy that characterize this year’s Immich-Batterieberg collection as a whole, but also a sense of transparency of juicily-abundant white peach, golden raspberry, and grapefruit to seemingly crystalline, shimmering mineral nuances; saliva-inducing salinity; and ginger spice. This long-finishing, exhilarating tribute to a great, unjustly neglected site and a challenging but potentially rewarding vintage will, I suspect, deeply satisfy its owners for at least the next 15 years. When Gernot Kollmann (for more about whose acquisition of this venerable estate, see my report in Issue 192) wrote me to describe his vines and strategy both as caught in late September between early onset of botrytis – especially in his warmest and theoretically best parcels – and retarded ripeness, it seemed to me that there was no way he would be able to pull out success remotely like that he achieved in his inaugural 2009 vintage. But Kollmann has done what I deemed impossible. How? “Our strategy,” relates this experienced oenologist “was to pick out the botrytis fruit early with a select team and vinify it separately according to its unique needs as regards clarification and pressing. But then I added those musts back to the eventual harvest from each site, so that they would complete fermentation together. What we picked later in healthy condition” – this was in late October and the first days of November; whereby Kollmann notes that especially the stoniest portions of Ellergrub and Batterieberg almost entirely resisted botrytis until the end – “even permitted us some pre-fermentative skin contact to help reduce the acidity. We didn’t de-acidify at all,” he maintains. “I opted for strong, warm fermentations,” Kollmann continues, “to encourage an abundant yeast population; a high yield of glycerin to render the wines smoother; as well as better clarification and stronger reductivity to counteract the oxidative influences of botrytis” and the fermenting tanks were regulated only sufficiently to see that they came down to what he called “intuitively low levels of residual sugar,” legal Trockenheit being coincidental rather than critical to his intentions to produce the most expressive, well-balanced possible “dry” Rieslings.Importer: Mosel Wine Merchant Trier, Germany (various importers); tel. (413) 429-6176; +49 (0) 651 14551 38