Boasts an essence of apples, with notes of ripe citrus laid over a broad structure of crisp acidity. Light spice and pastry notes linger on the juicy finish. Drink now through 2034.??–KM??Region: Germany / Mosel Select to Add

Musk melon, Persian melon and mango dominate the Fritz Haag 2011 Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Spatlese A.P. #7, conveying its sense of sheer ripeness, which is underscored by an opulent, glycerol-rich, subtly honey-slicked, creamy palate performance. This preserves the striking sense of delicacy and lift that were found in the corresponding Juffer and shares as well its saliva-inducing finishing salinity, though not quite that wine’s sense of energy and interplay. This beauty, too, should be worth following for at least two decades. “We started picking at the beginning of October,” relates Oliver Haag “because must weights were already high for Kabinett, but there was good acidity.” Haag pressed whole clusters rather than either crushing or permitting skin contact for his dry wines, and tended to favor a higher percentage of stainless steel for vinification and elevage because, as he puts it, “the material was all so ripe that I was worried it would come off as too opulent and voluminous.” Without question, he thereby puts his finger on a legitimate concern, and his own wines illustrate the truth that higher alcoholic volume and opulence – no matter what appears on the Riesling’s label – aren’t necessarily virtues, and in particular not in the context of this vintage. “To convey a sense of levity this year,” notes Haag, “was not so easy. Not that there was much botrytis out there,” he adds, though fortunately that fact did not deter him from rendering several spectacular ennobled wines in small volumes. Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. (800) 596-9463

Grapefruit, tangerine, nut oils and honey scent the Fritz Haag 2010 Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Spatlese A.P. #7, then lusciously saturate a fructose- and glycerin-rich palate, while slate and salt supply typical Mosel minerality and saliva-inducement. With significantly greater depth, richness, and downright allure than any of the wines that preceded it in this year’s line-up, this manages to balance its extremely high residual sugar while evincing a levity that took me by surprise for a Riesling of such opulence, even though I know that low alcohol alone makes such delicacy entirely explicable. I would anticipate 20-25 years of satisfaction. “You had to wait to pick,” comments Oliver Haag picked, “but not too late. Because after the end of October we had more rain, and by then the stems weren’t just ripe but just about shot (fertig), so that the grapes were literally hanging by a thin thread.” Different degrees of double-salt de-acidification were essayed (always on must), frequently only on certain lots of an eventual blend; but of the unabashedly residually sweet bottlings, Haag insists that only the Kabinett reflected a significant degree of de-acidification. Haag in my view quite correctly characterizes his generic bottlings as most illustrative of the vintage’s challenges and his selectively-picked residually sweet wines as being above-average ... “average” at this address, of course, having over the past several decades designated a very high quality indeed. “There were a lot of tough decisions to be made this year,” he relates. “Should we harvest this parcel or that? Pick now or later?” I share Haag’s opinion that as a group these wines will need longer than usual in bottle to really show their stuff. Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. ( 800) 596-9463

An almost gaudy sense of tropical ripeness in the nose of Haags’ 2009 Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Spatlese A.P. #7 put me in mind of an Auslese. Pink grapefruit, banana, mango, and quince are tinged with caramel but at the same time laced with sufficient sense of fresh citrus to convey an element of refreshment and vivacity even on a silken-textured, lushly-rich palate, and extending into a satisfyingly long finish. This effusive entry won’t make one forget its remarkable 2008 counterpart, but it should be worth following for 15-20 years, and eventually might well show more clarity and complexity. Oliver Haag picked from just before mid-October until November 10, and the resulting collection is most notable for stunning quality in its nobly sweet echelons, although the volume of each bottling is small (typically the equivalent of 200-300 full bottles) due to paucity of botrytis. Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. 800 596 9463.

Peach, papaya, musk melon, and mango in the nose of the Haags’ 2008 Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Spatlese A.P. #7 migrate onto a creamy yet animated and uncannily buoyant palate and waft their way – accompanied by lily-like floral perfume – into a long, soothing finish. Even airier and at least as elegant as the corresponding Juffer (which was harvested a week earlier, in the last days of October), this evinces a greater sense of ripeness by way of its tropical fruits and hints of honey, with suggestions of peach kernel, toasted nuts, brown spices, salt, and wet stone offering counterpoint. Does this wine ever really “touch down” on the palate? I know I am over-using “epitome” but how else can one express this wine’s relationship to its vintage’s potential? At around 500 cases, it represents a relatively large lot of Sonnenuhr Spatlese for the Haags, and they are setting some aside unsold. It should repay 25 or more years’ cellaring. Oliver Haag began picking already before the mid-point of October, but the results testify to his having had fully ripe grapes. “We did a lot of leaf-pulling and an extensive pre-harvest thinning this year,” he points out, adding that “the Auslesen were picked largely at the end of October, not too late. One picking was intended for Beerenauslese, but it didn’t appeal to me for that character, considering what good wines we have had in recent years, so I declassified that fruit into gold capsule Auslese.” Haag has this year dropped the Pradikat designations from all of his dry-tasting wines (and “Juffer” from what used to be "Juffer Kabinett"), while bottled his Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr-Sonnenuhr trocken as Grosses Gewachs. The idea is not only to simplify and to create a convention that non-Pradikat wines taste dry or nearly-so, but also to return to something more like the labeling that prevailed before 1971. But putting the words “Erste Lage” on the label of wines from the Sonnenuhr – in keeping with a VDP-wide program – actually adds further impetus to fatuous consumer questions. As all close students and lovers of Burgundy know, the words “premier cru” on a label mean increasingly little, and the best sites or portions of sites nowadays achieve their price and due reverence regardless of whether the label indicates “premier cru.” Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. 800 596 9463.