Weingut Ratzenberger Steeger St. Jost Riesling Grosses Gewachs, Mittelrhein, Germany

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The Ratzenberger 2009 Steeger St. Jost Riesling Grosses Gewachs was – as usual for this wine – not bottled until the beginning of September. (This year, the VDP allowed it to be shown via a cask sample at the Berlin presentations which in the first week of each September represent the coming-out party for the vintage’s Grosse Gewachse.) Apricot with its kernel; lemon; sage; and pine pitch inform a pungent, somewhat reductive nose. The palate impression here is firm yet juicy, dominated in strikingly Muscat-like fashion by apricot, lemon oil, and herbs, and possessed of a streak of salt so prominent it practically won’t die-away, and left me salivating helplessly. Hand in hand with this salinity goes a deep sense of extract sweetness despite analytical dryness. Yet at the same time there is an almost blazing brightness. I suspect this will be well worth following for 10-12 years, and that it will also probably long since have become more expressive than it was when I tasted it, a mere two weeks after bottling. Although this comes from some of the estate’s oldest, lowest-yielding vines and tiniest-berried selections as well as an ostensibly top site, it managed to stay just below 13% alcohol, presumably a tribute to the genetic material of this selection, though in part also due to conscious effort on the Ratzenbergers’ part to manage pruning and canopy so as to promote ripe flavors at moderate levels of grape sugar. There are, incidentally, around 2,500 bottles of this, which is nowadays at the high end for production of a Ratzenberger Grosses Gewachs. The two Jochen Ratzenbergers began picking early in October and were done by the end of that month, with – to the extent that I could assess them – consistently fine results. The collection included only a single botrytis wine, a Wolfshohle Auslese that had received some special press recognition in Germany very early, on account of which the father-son team claimed not to have even a single bottle to show me. What was to have been this year’s Bacharacher Posten Spatlese halbtrocken resolutely stopped fermenting with 30 grams of residual sugar; and I can’t offer a note on the results, because some Swiss merchant had bought every last bottle from Ratzenbergers. The 180 liters of Ratzenberger 2009 Kloster Furstental Eiswein had not nearly finished fermenting when I tasted it, but even in its leesy, cloudy, and still-active state it was clear that this would become an impressively concentrated libation. (It started life at 210 Oechsle and at the steady fermentative tempo which it had exhibited through September, was expected to officially become wine by last Christmas – though when it would be deemed “finished” was anybody’s guess.) Speaking of which, Ratzenbergers have just taken over some additional acreage in the Kloster Furstental, which in future might result in other single-vineyard bottlings from that site. “We couldn’t take all of the acreage that was offered,” relates the younger Jochen Ratzenberger, “but we took what we could handle. We want to do our part to see that this amazing steep site remains planted.” The absence of suggested retail pricing for many Ratzenberger wines I review could, I decided, use some explanation. By arrangement with their importers – as a survey of the U.S. marketplace confirms – only their lightest-weight wines are released by the Ratzenbergers in the year following their bottling (and even then, not their sweeter Kabinett from the St. Jost). But as wines with bottle age are released, Spatlesen have tended lately to sell in the $30 retail range; Auslesen and Grosse Gewachse in the $45-50 retail range, confirming Ratzenberger Rieslings as superb values.Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644