Weingut Max Ferd. Richter Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett Feinherb, Mosel, Germany

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From 70- to 80-year-old vines, the 2022 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett feinherb offers highly attractive, slightly reductive notes of bright fruits, broken slate, lemon juice and floral aromas. Lush and round on the palate, this is an elegant, quite intense and textured WSU with stimulating, saline and crystalline acidity and an intense and crunchy finish. It's light but pretty complex. 9.5% stated alcohol. Screw-cap closure. Tasted in May 2023.

From vines averaging 50 to 60 years of age that were picked at 74° Oechsle, the 2021 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett feinherb offers a pure, clear, clean and flinty slate bouquet with a delicate bright fruit aroma. Very elegant and refined on the palate, this is a light but charmingly lush, beautifully balanced WSU Kabinett with stimulating savoriness and crystalline salinity on the finish. A true Kabinett to have as an aperitif and with lighter dishes. Drink very young or aged 10 years old. 8.5% stated alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted at the domaine in July 2022.

Scents of fresh apple and musky peony perfume in the nose of Richter’s 2009 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett feinherb lead to a juicy, refreshing, delicate palate of measured, well-integrated sweetness in another Richter 2009 to show display relative simplicity (at least in its youth) but generous appeal and length. I would plan on enjoying it over the next 7-9 years. While yields were down significantly in Muhlheim and Brauneberg – particularly due to peronospora – and sorting almost universally required, Dirk Richter reports that his overall 2009 crop was above- average volume, though he acknowledges that due to the need for relatively intensive spraying against fungal pests, both its ripening and the evolution of the resulting wines were retarded. Kabinetts were not picked until the last days of October; acid levels of most wines are well above vintage average; there was little Auslese; and some wines (Kabinetts, as it happens!) had not yet bottled when I visited in September. Richer – whose Rieslings from top sites continue to be bargain-priced – has just taken over a section of Erdener Treppchen that is in the family of his cellarmaster, who has no heirs. While there were still stocks of some 2008 vintage Rieslings available when I visited in September, the 2009 Richter Pinot Blanc had already been sold out without remainder, so I did not get chance to taste that of-late often promising bottling.Importer: Langdon-Shiverick Cleveland, OH; tel. (216) 861-6800

The Richter 2006 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett feinherb balances beautifully at 25 grams of residual sugar, its site-typical apple and vanilla; lily, heliotrope, and honeysuckle perfume; as well as its textural creaminess all reinforced, yet its finishing character virtually dry. Thanks to 10.5% alcohol and the magic of 2007, this seems delicate. And the slate-lined, bitter-sweet finish lingers simply yet memorably. An outstanding value, it should drink well for at least 6-8 years. Dirk Richter is an historian of the Mosel as well as one of the region’s foremost growers, and he claims that on five occasions in the eleven years between and including the epochal vintages of 1911 and 1921, flowering on the Mosel took place in May ... but then not again until 2007. He started picking already in early October, but only as a means of thinning (“pre-harvesting”) his Brauneberg vineyards, and the resultant Kabinett is rather green in flavor. Harvest did not begin in earnest here until mid-October, and save for the two T.B.A.s that he painstakingly collected, Richter insists there was scarcely any botrytis. Interesting, the yields from Richter’s Wehlener Sonnenuhr vineyards – his only remaining ungrafted vines – were the highest this year that he has ever experienced, and the wines are by no means disappointing (although Auslese was not possible). The grip exhibited by his dry-tasting wines may in part come from the skin contact Richter gives most of them, in part to buffer their acids. Still, as he puts it, “with the intense minerality, strong acidity, and very low pH of Mosel Riesling, some residual sugar is needed. And here, with feinherb-as-trocken, that need is borne out quite clearly, and the wine tastes dry, and people drink it as ‘dry’.” What’s more, lower alcohol helps these “dry” Riesling dance. If feinherb (often as high here as 25 grams in residual sugar) works on Richter’s German customers, halleluiah! For anybody else, these feinherb Kabinetts should be no-brainers, especially at his prices. Richer shares my enthusiasm for the undeservedly obscure and misunderstood Pinot Blanc (a.k.a. Wiesser Burgunder), and is in process of doubling his acreage and planning to produce some Sekt from it as wellImporter: Langdon-Shiverick Cleveland,?OH; tel. (216) 861-6800