Spanier's 2009 Hohen-Sulzer Riesling trocken is scented and flavored with raw hazelnut, freshly-ground corn meal, and cyanic suggestions of apricot kernel and apple pit. An oily as well as subtly creamy sense of textural richness along with the aforementioned piquancy is fortunately leavened by refreshing if bittersweet kumquat, orange, and lemon, so that despite a mere four grams of residual sugar, this manages to avoid any significant sense of austerity, and despite harboring almost 13.5% alcohol it comes off as svelte and heat-free. Low-toned notes of hazelnut, pumpkin, and crushed stone persist in a satisfyingly sustained finish. Some tasters are apt to find this brooding or perhaps slightly severe, but I am convinced it will deliver some fascinating synergies if carefully employed at table over the coming 3-4 years. Oliver Spanier - for information about whose distinctive sites and methods consult especially my report in issue 185 - harvested until November 3, 2009, allowing almost an entire month for optimizing ripeness. Just as at their Kuhling-Gillot estate, the team of Spanier and his wife Carolin Gillot seek to avoid bottling non-trocken wines, instead blending away any lots that finish with more than 9 grams of residual sugar. Spanier is among the many German Riesling growers who - in his words - are "working in the direction of clarity, freshness, finesse and elegance of expression rather than extract or power" (for which he used the English word). But it's one thing to talk the talk and another to walk the walk - assuming that one is attracted by these stated goals - and in that respect, Spanier is not the only ambitious German grower I have encountered whose ostensibly lesser bottlings (from 2009, anyway) strike me as living up to his stated ideals better than do his Grosse Gewachse.Imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799