Weingut Daniel Vollenweider Wolfer Goldgrube Riesling Auslese, Mosel, Germany

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The 2019 Wolfer Goldgrube Riesling Auslese is intense and highly refined on the concentrated, earthy/slatey and pretty complex nose with its notes of crushed stones, lemon oil and chocolate pepper. Sweet but frisky and buoyant on the palate, this is a dense yet highly refined, beautifully balanced, weightless yet intense Auslese bottled with 8.5% alcohol. A fabulous, very stimulating and playful Riesling! Tasted from AP 03/20 in June 2020.

Selected-out over a range of parcels, the fruit for Vollenweider’s 2010 Wolfer Goldgrube Riesling Auslese was almost entirely botrytized; yet, as he points out, the wine’s brightness and clarity belie that fact. Lemon rind and radish lend aromatic prickle, while nectarine and lime reminiscent of this year’s Steffensberg Spatlese are delivered in an especially concentrated, bright form on the palate, along with Persian and honeydew melon that add succulence to what would otherwise be an almost Eiswein-like essay in high ripeness and simultaneously high acidity. This finishes with persistent, pointed, prickly intensity as well as invigoration and refreshment. I would expect it to hold up energetically for 25 or more years, though I won’t try to speculate on possible personality evolution. In 2010, Daniel Vollenweider’s suffered roughly a two-thirds crop loss vis-a-vis his normal expectations. Picking of this depleted vintage began already on October 8 and was finished at month’s end. “It wasn’t a year of great phenolic ripeness,” he reports candidly, “and picking decisions were incredibly difficult.” Vollenweider extended skin contact and bottled most of his wines later than usual in order to afford his young wines longer time on their lees. Only a single trocken lot was acid-adjusted, and then merely by one gram, with calcium carbonate. “I would have been happy to let at least some lots – in particular for my dry wine – go through malo,” he remarks, “but my pH levels were so low that there was not a chance of that happening.” Levels of residual sugar are significantly higher in this year’s sweet wines than Vollenweider’s already high norm, but as he asserts “they need this, definitively, to balance out such high acids,” and the net effect is by no means a sweeter taste. Reductive and sulfur-related notes are even a bit more frequently evidence here than one already anticipates at this address, and Vollenweider hypothesizes that the wines’ low pHs led to a temporary accentuation of such traits. Importers include Vineyard Research, Inc., Lunenburg, MA; tel. 617 686 8052; Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR; tel. 888 274 4312; also A Bill Mayer Age of Riesling Selection Imported by Valley View Wine Sales, Glen Ellen, CA; tel. (510) 549 2444

The Vollenweider 2009 Wolfer Goldgrube Riesling Auslese – picked out over numerous days and parcels – is characterized by a softer feel than the corresponding Steffensberg, with pleasantly watercolor-like impression of scents and flavors bleeding into one another while remaining transparent to stony and spicy nuances. Over-ripe Persian and musk melons, peach, quince preserves, and dustings of botrytis spice on the nose follow onto a silken, soothing, buoyant palate accompanied by hints of caramel and honey. The finish here is surprisingly restrained though subtly spicy and mineral, and having assured ourselves that the bottle is entirely in order, Vollenweider and I are both inclined to believe that its relative reticence is only a passing stage. I would want to revisit this but anticipate at least 15 years of good behavior. Regular followers of Daniel Vollenweider’s wines (for more general information about which consult my many previous reports) will note several changes with vintage 2009. The volume of dry wines has increased, because as he has expanded his acreage, he needs to generate more business from inside Germany. There is an absence of wine in the interim “feinherb” range, but that, Vollenweider assures me, is merely a vintage aberration: he had so few musts in 2009 that in his view stood any chance of fermenting successfully below 60 or more grams of residual sugar that he needed to encourage those he did have to cross the threshold into trocken (read: “marketable-inside-Germany”) territory. The ban on pre-1971 vineyard names being selectively enforced by the controlling authorities, and the name of one of those vineyards most dear to him, namely “Reiler,” also being the same as the adjectival form on labels of nearby wine village Reil, Vollenweider has decided to banish from his price list and bottles any vineyard identifications within the Goldgrube. He bottled his sweet wines already in April, save for a mere 20 liters of potential T.B.A. that were still fermenting. That Vollenweider is happy to take his chances in such low-volume, high-Oechsle circumstances rather than cautiously blending-away the sluggishly-fermenting must was reinforced by a taste from bottle of his would-be 2005 T.B.A., a strikingly Eszencia-like if almost too-sweet, 4% alcohol non-wine of which there were 50 liters on whose continued fermentation he finally gave up, and on which I omit further enticing details, since it cannot be commercialized. Importers include Vineyard Research, Inc., Lunenburg, MA; tel. 617 686 8052; Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR; tel. 888 274 4312; A Bill Mayer Age of Riesling Selection Imported by Valley View Wine Sales, Glen Ellen, CA; tel. (510) 549 2444