Loosen’s 2009 Erdener Pralat Riesling Auslese gold capsule A.P. #45 – an auction lot – offers ultra-concentration of tangerine mingled with honey and caramel, and is as bright and invigorating as it is rich and unctuously textured. The fresh citrus and the botrytis aspects compliment rather than conflicting with one another; and this wine’s superbly long and exhilarating finish even harbors a telltale Mosel hint of wet stone. (While a bottle of this would normally have an auction sticker attached to it, I can’t otherwise see how someone could tell whether the gold capsule on an isolated bottle of Loosen Pralat was “l(fā)ong,” so I have appended the wine’s A.P.# for safety’s sake.) “I want real Kabinetts,” says Ernst Loosen by way of explaining his early start on the 2009 harvest, “between 80 and 83 Oechsle, with crisp acidity, freshness, and the like; and you can’t wait around, especially when you have five, maybe seven days of Kabinett-picking to do and every day ripeness is rising. This year, we wanted to delineate even more sharply the difference between Kabinett and Spatlese, as well as a distinct difference between Spatlese and Auslese.” In practical terms, this meant among other things slightly reducing the levels of residual sugar in the Kabinetts (Loosen says that trend will continue incrementally); and reserving botrytis fruit solely for wines labeled “Auslese.” Eiswein from Lay, Treppchen, and Sonnenuhr; Eiswein and T.B.A. from Pralat; as well as a T.B.A. from Wurzgarten were all – according to cellarmaster Bernhard Schug – in various states of fermentation or preparation for bottling when I visited in September, so consequently I shall review those wines (or at least some subset thereof) at such time as I report on the 2010 vintage.Importer: Loosen Brothers, Portland, OR tel. (510) 864-7255

As is typical for the Pralat super-Auslese that he auctions, Loosen’s 2008 Erdener Pralat Riesling Auslese gold capsule essentially originates with the upper, entirely botrytized half of each of the best clusters in the site. Pungent brown spices, sultana, candied tangerine rind, sassafras candy, and quince in the nose presage a lavishly rich palate that is nonetheless shot through with efficacious acidity and finishes with kaleidoscopically interactive diversity. The overall marriage of extravagance and invigoration here is remarkable, but as Bernard Schug points out, the shriveled berries in question had enormously concentrated what were already high levels of acidity. Bottles of this elixir should serve as their own 40 or more year battery packs. (I have not tasted this amazing Riesling since it was bottled.)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