Weingut Max Ferd. Richter Mulheimer Sonnenlay Riesling Auslese, Mosel, Germany

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Racy, this is flush with lively mineral and savory herb notes, including tarragon, candied basil and thyme. There's plenty of apple and red peach flavors as well, revealing a long, lush finish of pastry and buttercream. Drink now through 2036. 135 cases made, 20 cases imported.??–KM??Region: Germany / Mosel Select to Add

The combination of elevation and wind exposure with south-facing inclination in Richter’s Johannisberg vineyard (now part of the Sonnenlay) no doubt helps lend his 2008 Muhlheimer Sonnenlay Riesling Auslese its combination of ripe pit fruit and citrus with spine and energy. Luscious pink grapefruit, blood orange, and white peach are tinged with brown spices, salt, and stone in a finish of impressive length and vigor. This Riesling of relatively spare texture and impeccable sugar-acid balance is no doubt a candidate for a quarter century’s cellaring. “We had the November weather in October, and the lovely October weather in November,” says Dirk Richter of 2008, thereby essentially explaining his harvest strategy. He ameliorated acidity through skin contact; nature helped by precipitating tartrates; and nonetheless, some wines were de-acidified already as must. Richter is pleased to characterize the results as “classic Mosel Rieslings,” and since Richter spends a great deal of time promoting his wines in the U.S. I am happy to be able to concur in that description, even if some of his 2008s are only modestly successful. Richter admits that this collection is likely at least for the short term to be overshadowed by those on either side of it, but speculates that the 2008s will have their day if given time.Importer: Langdon-Shiverick Cleveland,?OH; tel. (216) 861-6800

The 2007 Muhlheimer Sonnenlay Riesling Auslese carries Richter’s cask number 128 on the label, although there isn’t another otherwise eponymous wine with which it might be confused. Smelling of licorice, root beer, and caramel, this has a rather dark, roasted, botrytis-tinged character on the palate, with honey, malt, licorice, dates, and caramel rather than fresh fruits or juiciness informing its impressively long finish. An undeniably striking, rich, and well-concentrated Riesling, this will not be everyone’s idea of Mosel, and will need considerable time in bottle before its sweetness begins to back off. But it would be fascinating to follow for at least a decade. 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