Busch’s 2008 Pundericher Marienburg Falkenlay Riesling represents the roughly half of Falkenlay Riesling destined for Trockenheit that did not make it, and while Busch explained (see my note on the corresponding Grosses Gewachs) that it was on account of the manifestly high quality of the dry half that he elected to bottle the two separately, this legally halbtrocken version has its own manifest virtues. Musky narcissus-like floral notes along with scents of almond and ripe peach usher in a palate warm not in the alcoholic sense but rather in terms of a more welcoming richness than displayed by most of Busch’s dry-tasting 2008s. (And yes, I am aware that this comment exposes me as a wimp for a large segment of German readership, journalists, and wine growers, because I’m showing preference for a Riesling that has a bit higher residual sugar, rather than a “principled, trocken wine.”) Here we have a combination of creaminess of texture with vivacity, and transparency not to a hard stoniness or pungent smokiness but to the interplay of nuanced mineral, floral, and fruit elements. There’s something almost crystalline and prismatic about the effect. I feel more comfortable, too, in predicting the likelihood that this genuinely elegant effort will be worth following for a decade. Interestingly, this half of the 2008 Falkenlay came from a portion of the site where ancient, ungrafted vines are interspersed with younger, clonal, wire-trained plants, with the result that the must weight was a bit higher and, opines Busch, the concentration of flavor slightly less.Clemens Busch – for more about whose impressive efforts in organically farming diverse sites the length of the long, steep Marienburg consult my reports in issues 179 and 185 – pushed many of his 2008s to extremes of dryness or sweetness. The majority of his dry-tasting wines – most of which did not finish fermenting until early summer – were rendered legally trocken (some of them offered as Grosse Gewachse and some to be released late), and while alcohol per se was seldom a problem this year, I found some of these wines austere, inelegant and charmless. (Dry wines here, incidentally, often go through malolactic transformation, but apparently due to such low pHs in 2008, only a single lot did so. There was however, reports Busch, extensive tartrate precipitation, which lowered the levels of tartaric acid, but automatically enhanced the ratio of green apply malic acidity.) This is not to say there aren’t many bottlings I found impressive and even beautiful in the present collection, especially – for those who don’t mind very prominent sweetness – the range of ennobled wines. Busch didn’t even launch his “pre-harvest” passes through the vineyards until nearly mid-October, and began serious harvesting only toward the end of that month, finishing in the third week of November, “but,” as he says, “it was a harvest that demanded a lot of time, because one day you could pick, and the next you had to wait” due to inclement weather, “and the botrytis often developed negatively,” demanding painstaking selection. Apropos the precariousness of Mosel wine culture, here is an amazing statistical anecdote Busch offered. The quality and character of his wines, he believes, is dependent on the high percentage of ancient vines trained in the traditional manner (a.k.a. Stockkultur) to a single stake, with two canes. A single, middle-aged woman who has no protegee is responsible for binding the canes on 80% of Busch’s roughly 25 acres of vines, a talent she acquired out of personal passion, and one that only a handful of even septuagenarian Moselaner any longer possess!Mosel Wine Merchant selections (various importers), Trier, Germany; fax 011 49 (0)651-14551 39; also imported by Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR tel. 888 274 4312