Weingut Ratzenberger Bacharacher Wolfshohle Riesling Spatlese, Mittelrhein, Germany

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Rhubarb, pineapple, and purple plum make for a bracing and invigoratingly tart cast to Ratzenberger’s 2009 Bacharacher Wolfshohle Riesling Spatlese and collide with considerable residual sugar for a tense and remarkable un-sweet overall impression. Yeasty overtones reinforce the sense of an awkwardly adolescent wine, but one which at only 8% alcohol is certainly strikingly delicate. Like this year’s “Caspar R” bottling, there is high and extremely efficacious acidity here that makes for a positively blazing intensity, as well as a persistent undertone of wet stone after the fruit has done raging in the finish. I expect this electrically energetic Riesling will be worth following for a quarter century and have many more expressive days than the one on which I tasted it.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