Rose, peony, pink grapefruit, peach, mango, and honey effusively rise from the glass of Weis’s 2006 Piesporter Goldtropfchen Riesling Auslese, which as usual comes from the family’s old vines in the downstream, so-called “Jud” or Judenberg section. Creamy and rich on the palate yet with mouthwateringly juicy pink grapefruit and wafting floral perfume supporting a sense of liveliness and levity, this is one of those seemingly contradictory miracles of 2006 concentration as well as a remarkable amount not just of super-ripe, ennobled fruit, but of minerality, expressed as saline, chalky, and wet stone notes. The wine’s haunting florality clings right through its long, almost ethereal finish. Once again, the team at Sankt Urbans-Hof has given us a classic expression of Goldtropfchen that should be capable of evolving gracefully for 35-40 years. Nik Weis has proven himself a master not only at judging balance in Riesling, but at successfully marketing well-balanced but not legally trocken wine to his countrymen. (Chapeau!) That was a good thing this vintage, he says, because he thinks many of the high must-weight wines he harvested would not have balanced either at significantly higher alcohol or residual sugar. I agree, having found his wines in the lower realms of residual sugar especially successful. The vintage demanded compromises in harvest strategy if not in ultimate quality. “There were wonderful shriveled berries in the Laurentius Lay,” for example, relates Weis, “and had I had another fifteen pickers or another few days, we could have harvested a Trockenbeerenauslese” as happened in 2005, when one of the greatest wines of the vintage resulted. “But I had Kabinett grapes in Piesport at that point that would no longer have been Kabinett if I had waited while the whole crew went picky gepidelt hatten. We had to deal in full parcels this year, not select.” The 2006 wines here were taken from their lees and bottled sooner than in most years.Importer: H. B. Wine Merchants, New York, NY; tel. (917) 402-0456