With Beerenauslese must weight, the small lot of 2006 Munsterer Pittersberg Riesling Auslese Gold Capsule is musky, spicy, headily floral, and incorporates Scheurebe-like pink grapefruit and black currant. Oily and rich, it threatens to lose site of its primary duties, go over-the-top, and be swamped by sheer over-ripeness and a dusty overlay of fungal botrytis. I feel as though I jinxed this when I said what I did about the “regular” Pittersberg. But perhaps the vineyard had to be purged of this elixir? Creamy, spicy, peachy and honeyed, in its finish this is amazing for its ability to buffer-out more than 100 grams of residual sugar, and it’s struggling to be luscious like its siblings. Give this at least ten years and see if it won’t have shaped up.Stefan Rumpf’s collections may still – as I wrote of it previously – be “sprawling ... at times hit and miss.” But his aim becomes ever more accurate. (Son Johannes is now intimately involved.) This year, the Rumpfs decided to take advantage of their enhanced acreage of a variety that they would probably have given up on ten years ago had it not been for their importer, and bottle a dry Scheurebe. The timing was perfect, because not only did this estate make some of the only noteworthy Scheurebe of the vintage, but in the Pfalz – even when growers are not challenged as they were in 2006 – Scheurebe is more and more getting marginalized as a “supplemental variety,” destined solely for some of that region’s rare wine of residual sweetness.Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300