St Urbans-Hof Leiwener Laurentiuslay Riesling Spatlese A P #24

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The Sankt Urbans-Hof 2006 Leiwener Laurentiuslay Riesling Spatlese A.P. #24 (harvested on the same day as the other Laurentiuslay wines of the vintage) smells of white peach, licorice, and tarragon. A lovely hint of caramelization clings to the peaches on the flatteringly creamy palate, and chalk and wet stone mineral suggestions along with nut oils, vanilla, mocha, and toasted coconut inform a finish of striking clarity and buoyancy. This is as complex today as the “feinherb” version, not quite so striking or intense, but subtler in its reflection of botrytis and slightly more polished and refined. It might well also be longer-lived, up to 30 years. Nik Weis has proven himself a master not only at judging balance in Riesling, but at successfully marketing well-balanced but not legally trocken wine to his countrymen. (Chapeau!) That was a good thing this vintage, he says, because he thinks many of the high must-weight wines he harvested would not have balanced either at significantly higher alcohol or residual sugar. I agree, having found his wines in the lower realms of residual sugar especially successful. The vintage demanded compromises in harvest strategy if not in ultimate quality. “There were wonderful shriveled berries in the Laurentius Lay,” for example, relates Weis, “and had I had another fifteen pickers or another few days, we could have harvested a Trockenbeerenauslese” as happened in 2005, when one of the greatest wines of the vintage resulted. “But I had Kabinett grapes in Piesport at that point that would no longer have been Kabinett if I had waited while the whole crew went picky gepidelt hatten. We had to deal in full parcels this year, not select.” The 2006 wines here were taken from their lees and bottled sooner than in most years.Importer: H. B. Wine Merchants, New York, NY; tel. (917) 402-0456