Loosen’s 10% alcohol 2008 Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Kabinett feinherb once again demonstrates how a little bit of residual sugar and correspondingly lower alcohol can unlock the virtues of a vintage, here making for succulent Persian melon and white peach fruit enlivened by tingling lime, refreshing, delicate, and transparent to nuances of toasted, salted squash seeds and almond as well as crushed stone. Nor is this the least bit spare for all of its lift and lightness, making a positively satiny, creamy impression. This understated yet complex Riesling is as much an example of the magic of Mosel balance as are 8% alcohol Kabinetts in which high residual sugar is somehow held in check. Furthermore, this outstanding value will prove enormously versatile at table anytime over the next dozen or more years. While one has to consider the known stylistic prejudices of his interlocutor (!), Loosen told me: “I’d like to keep lowering the residual sugar in my Kabinetts and my ‘Dr. L.’ Riesling by two grams a year until, gradually, in 5 or 10 years these wines that we sell (most of) in America can have this sort of feinherb interplay.” Ernst Loosen insists he aims to observe an upper limit of 12.5% alcohol for his trocken bottlings, a level that one might have expected was easily achievable in 2008; but in fact, a portion of this vintage’s collection comes close to transgressing it. When it comes to residually sweet Kabinett – a genre in which Loosen has long excelled – his frequently-voiced concerns that “the real thing” was becoming almost impossible (or at least, impossibly expensive) to achieve nowadays certainly do not apply to the 2008 vintage, when his collection of Kabinetts is not only superb, but also lively and feather-light. Indeed, the whole 2008 Loosen Oeuvre – while consisting of fewer wines than usual, with its nobly sweet selections even more (and more spectacularly) focused than usual on Pralat – is superb. What’s more, even cellarmaster Bernard Schug voiced his amazement at just how little sweetness most of the residually sweet wines display.Importer: Loosen Brothers, Portland, OR tel. (510) 864-7255