A savor of salted caramel and browned butter mingles with the Sonnenuhr-typical scents and flavors of vanilla-tinged baked apple in a Loosen 2011 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese that stimulates taste buds and salivary glands alike, and preserves a surprising and highly welcome degree of fresh fruit juiciness to enliven its rich finish. The product of relatively early harvest with, explains Schug, a very fine dusting of botrytis, this pure and alluring elixir should be well worth following for a quarter century. “Early botrytis,” he adds, “can preserve a brilliant acidity.” “It’s really quite simple,” opined cellarmaster Bernhard Schug, “2010: not much (wine); high acids; ‘complicated’ vintage. 2011: good volume; acids normal, sometimes too little; no problems. But I taste some wines with problems this year. Where did they come from? People were overwhelmed and stressed by the volume. But from the standpoint of cellar technique this was an easy year provided you were organized. There was a danger with high yields that you could get thin wines. To counteract that it was important to leave them on the fine lees as long as possible,” and in fact, only one of the single vineyard trocken wines – which I have not had a chance to revisit since – had been bottled as of my visit last September. Kabinett bottlings this year perpetuate an estate trend, about which I have repeatedly written, toward lowering their residual sugar; though it must be said that 40-50 grams in the context of 2011 fruit generosity and low acidity comes off as decidedly sweet. This Loosen collection is especially successful in light of weaknesses I perceived in wines of other top-notch growers in Erden and Urzig where so many of this estate’s vineyards are located. Picking began already on September 22, but Schug hastens to assure me that his pace soon slackened noticeably in view of the continuing positive evolution of the fruit through early October. “It’s important to realize,” insists Schug, “that you can have almost any kind of weather all summer long – provided it doesn’t just rain continually, or hit the upper thirties (100+F.) for a week or more – because photosynthesis is guaranteed, whereas the quality difference is always going to be made by good weather in September and October.” Importer: Loosen Bros. USA Ltd. Oregon City, OR; tel. (503) 984-3041