Vollenweider’s 2006 Wolfer Goldgrube Riesling Kabinett is loaded with CO2 and youthful yeastiness, along with floral perfume and ripe peach and apple. Lemony brightness keeps its improbable 60 grams or residual residual sugar largely at bay. For all of its sugar, the alcohol is a (for the genre) relatively high but for the vintage typical 9%. And yet, there is genuine delicacy along with a satiny texture and a perfumed finish. Drink this at around age 5-10, but it is delightful now if you have a sweet tooth. “We started picking immediately after the October 3rd rain, and then under high pressure,” relates Daniel Vollenweider. Already then, there was little to be harvested below Auslese, not surprising considering the general trends this vintage and the fact that Vollenweider, as a friend to botryits in normal times, never sprays to keep it at bay. But in a departure from the norm, one cask had reached ten grams of residual sugar by the end of last summer and Vollenweider decided he might as well taste what a truly dry Wolfer Goldgrube Spatlese would be like! (I have not connected with the bottled wine.) A second major vineyard reclamation project in the Schimbock – a once-renowed riverside parcel within today’s Trabener Wurzgarten – is where Vollenweider intends to specialize in dry Riesling.Importer: Vineyard Research, Inc., Lunenburg, MA tel. 617 686 8052; Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR tel. 888 274 4312; also A Bill Mayer Age of Riesling Selection Imported by Valley View Wine Sales, Glen Ellen, CA; tel. (510) 549-2444