Intense salt, chalk, smoke and citrus as well as musky, narcissus and wisteria-like floral perfume are present already in the nose of Weil’s 2007 Kiedricher Grafenberg Auslese, which saturates the palate with deep pit fruit and citrus while bitter and tart elements from fruit pit and fruit skin help convey a persistent sense of invigoration and salt and chalk a sense of minerality, even as the wine takes on a honeyed richness which Weil seeks to assure me is – typically for this wine – the product of tiny, subtly-desiccated golden berries rather than botrytis. Given its sheer concentration despite lift and delicacy, and its unusual degree of vivacity, I would anticipate a quarter-century of satisfaction and stimulation here. Today, though, this shows marginally less elegance and organization than the Spatlese, and I would be disinclined to revisit it for several years.
Wilhelm Weil has doubled his press capacity after the 2006 experience, and in light of what he sees as an inevitable long-term truncation of the time available to harvest, given ever-earlier picking dates. But be that theory as it may, 2007 offered a full six weeks for the main harvest alone (nine weeks, if one counts “pre-harvest” thinning and Eiswein). The results – predictably, given the track record at this spare-no-expenses estate – were impressive from Q.b.A. to T.B.A., and included a generally better-balanced array of dry wines than 2006 had permitted. Since there are 22,000 and 27,000 bottles each of the two top dry Rieslings here, by the way, it’s not as though they are rare, even though many Grosses Gewachs bottlings – including from large, famous wineries – are produced in tiny amounts.
Imported by Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. (800) 596 9463; beginning in fall, 2009, imported by Loosen Brothers, Portland, OR tel. (510) 864-7255
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