Kuhns 2009 Riesling trocken Quarzit features mirabelle, white peach, nut oils, and hints of musk in an enticing nose and an adamantly dry (2 gram residual sugar), invigoratingly saline, and sharp palate that hints at radish, lemon rind, and toasted, salted hickory. There is an enveloping sense of richness here despite the wines bit of bite, though I prefer the balance of the marginally higher residual sugar and lower-alcohol (11.5%) “Jacobus” bottling. This ought to perform well for 4-6 years. Peter Jakob Kuhn – for more about whose distinctive stylistic and agricultural aspirations consult my several earlier reports – had every reason to express delight in his 2009 collection, “but it didnt require enormous skill to make excellent wine this year,” he added self-effacingly and smilingly. Kuhn noted that he did have to warm the cellar to get a number of his lots to reach the desired degree of dryness. The dry wines as usual here underwent malo, but it was not a very profound transformation given the ripeness (and hence low malic acidity) of raw material; and most of the finished wines display plenty of sap and vivacity despite harboring low measurable acidity. Noting that “If you have to wait for botrytis to come, the berries eventually become sweet but harbor less finesse; early harvest always results in the best nobly sweet wines,” Kuhn suggests that such optimal botrytis harvest was possible to only a very limited extent in 2009 and explains his variable degree of success.Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279 0799

An intriguing wine that lacks fruit in the traditional sense, yet possesses ample weight and a brooding, mineral presence that comes across as wet stone and machine oil. Those elements linger on the finish.——J.C.(12/1/2011)—— 87