St Urbans-Hof Schodener Saarfeilser Marienberg Riesling Spatlese Feinberb

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Weis’s 2009 Schodener Saarfeilser Marienberg Riesling Spatlese feinherb this year features its sites complete official name, but unlike this year’s dry-tasting Mehringer and Wiltinger, with the Pradikat and word “feinherb” retained. “I really thought this had Spatlese character,” he explains, and there is indeed noticeable if subtle sweetness. (Interestingly, the wines of Lauer and Loch from this exceptional and unusual site – for more about which consult earlier reviews of the wines – almost never finish entirely dry either.) Pure pear and cherry wreathed in hyacinth and honeysuckle, and mingled with nut oils and smoky crushed stone notes inform the nose as well as a luscious, creamily-textured, almost custard-like palate underlain by a lasting diversity of mineral nuances typical for this vineyard (whether or not related to its looking like a cross between slate-tiled Mosel and cobbled Chateauneuf-du-Pape). This should prove well worth following over the next 12-15 years if not longer. Nik Weis thinks 2009 – in which his team harvested well into November – really demonstrated the cumulative effects from a decade of intensively “in gardener’s fashion” hoeing the soil, composting, pruning short, returning wire-trained vines to single posts, and in general farming so as to put the brakes on sugar accumulation in the grapes and permit ripening to greater incipient complexity as well as delicacy. This entails inter alia backing-off from too aggressive a green harvest when it comes to the very best sites, and leaving a few more bunches to hang for longer. “Anytime you’re in a position to harvest a Trockenbeerenauslese from the Ockfener Bockstein, and you feel compelled to place the Piesporter Goldtropfchen before the corresponding Ockfener Bockstein in the tasting sequence, that’s a great vintage,” says Weis, echoing a traditional sentiment that Saar Rieslings are a touchstone of top quality throughout the greater Mosel region. Indeed, this collection offers the very apotheosis of Bockstein, and if you don’t think this site (or at least, the finest parts of it) is truly great – I didn’t myself until I encountered old wines at this address 15 years ago – get ready to have a conversion experience! Incidentally, Weis has bought up the rest of the original Zickelgarten within Bockstein, so that were he to win permission to re-activate that site name (retained in the 1971 Wine Law but last utilized by Kesselstatt in 1983 and later abrogated after no subsequent owners chose to declare it) he would have a really top-class monopole. For the second year running at this address – and despite the fact that fermentations were relatively fleet – there is only a single legally trocken bottling, namely the inaugural Grosses Gewachs – not coincidentally a loner as well for having been fermented with cultured yeasts in order to insure that its finished residual sugar qualified for the club in question.Importer: H. B. Wine Merchants, New York, NY; tel. (917)-402-0456

Gooseberry, redcurrant, and mint mark the nose and invigorating palate of Weis’s 2008 Schodener Saarfeilser Riesling Spatlese feinherb, from a unique, drought-prone, cobbled site along the Saar that is shared with the Lauer and Loch estates. (The full name of the site – for more about which, consult previous reviews of its wines – now appears in small print on the back label. The wine has typically been referred to chez Sankt Urbans-Hof – and, indeed, for most of the 20th century – simply as “Saarfeilser.”) An overt sense of wet stone sets off peach and tart berry. Bittersweet suggestions of iris perfume waft throughout, while faintly fusil and chicken broth notes remind me of Chablis. Weis indicates that he employs skin contact to “succeed in capturing the almost Muscat- or Traminer-like character that Riesling can achieve on the Saar, but without that maceration engendering bitterness.” This offers a fine example of concentration along with elegance and refinement, its residual sugar serving to keep the alcohol down to 10%, yet without engendering any significant sweetness. I would expect it to keep well for at least a dozen years. Sankt Urbans-Hof, notes proprietor Nik Weis, experienced a good ten degrees Oechsle difference in 2008 between its ripest Saar fruit – bottled as Spatlese – and that of the Mosel, which reached Auslese level even without stringent selection of botrytis fruit. “We find this a terrific vintage,” remarks Weis – who compares its style with 1998 – “inasmuch as at long last we again have the clear differentiation between Kabinett as it should be, Spatlese, and ennobled Auslese.” Remarkably, there is only a single trocken bottling here this year (from Mehring) which I did not taste and which was destined for the Landhaus Sankt Urban restaurant of Weis’s sister and brother-in-law.Importer: H. B. Wine Merchants, New York, NY; tel. (917)-402-0456