From ancient vines with a character of Riesling grapes that Fricke says she has never encountered elsewhere, and whose crop she must purchase, a 2008 Lorcher Schlossberg Riesling is beautifully-balanced and still dry tasting with 16 grams residual sugar. Iris, narcissus, green tea, nut oils, lemon, and white peach scent the nose. There is a delectable dialectic of subtle creaminess and refresh vivacity on the palate, and fascinating nutty and stony low tones persist in a long finish. The time it took to press this crop of tiny and according to Fricke perfect-looking berries in a small basket press resulted in inevitable extended skin contact which seems to have contributed to the sense of invigoration and energy and in that sense perhaps to have stood-in structurally for a relatively paucity of acidity when compared with the other Fricke 2008s. Eva Fricke works full-time with Johannes Leitz in Rudesheim. “I started out with a Rudesheimer Berg Rottland idea,” she says, but then she looked downstream and around the great northerly curve in the Rhine to Lorch and Lorchhausen, “and I saw these soils, these old vines, and these exposures and I though ‘that’s just got to turn out well.’” She now owns as well as rents tiny plots in those villages. The results (based on my assessment of these 2008s – Fricke in fact began, with two wines, in 2006) are impressive if tending toward austerity, and reflect the unique character of Riesling from these steep slate sites, which – meant as absolutely no criticism – is more Mittelrhein- than Rheingau-like. I should note that Fricke says her experience thus far indicates that her wines need half a year to truly recover from bottling, which these 2008s were not even close to having received when I tasted them last September. Importer: Farm Wine Imports, Sausalito, CA; tel. (415) 331-4906