Based largely on tiny, golden, millerandanged and botrytis-tinged berries, the Loosen 2008 Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling Spatlese Gold Capsule is suffused with honey, nougat, and malt, alongside strawberry preserves and hints of white raisin. Incredibly light yet creamy and palate-saturating, this brings nuances of green tea, brown spices, salt, and slate into its ravishing finish, with its richness and ennoblement balanced by an only modest sense of sheer sweetness. It should be worth following for 25 years. Ernst Loosen insists he aims to observe an upper limit of 12.5% alcohol for his trocken bottlings, a level that one might have expected was easily achievable in 2008; but in fact, a portion of this vintage’s collection comes close to transgressing it. When it comes to residually sweet Kabinett – a genre in which Loosen has long excelled – his frequently-voiced concerns that “the real thing” was becoming almost impossible (or at least, impossibly expensive) to achieve nowadays certainly do not apply to the 2008 vintage, when his collection of Kabinetts is not only superb, but also lively and feather-light. Indeed, the whole 2008 Loosen Oeuvre – while consisting of fewer wines than usual, with its nobly sweet selections even more (and more spectacularly) focused than usual on Pralat – is superb. What’s more, even cellarmaster Bernard Schug voiced his amazement at just how little sweetness most of the residually sweet wines display.Importer: Loosen Brothers, Portland, OR tel. (510) 864-7255