Fricke relates that her 2008 Lorcher Krone Riesling Spatlese originated largely in golden berries with some botrytis, and whose must stopped fermenting with very high residual sugar but was then blended down with the addition of a drier lot. Candied lime, green tea, honeysuckle, and quince preserves inform the nose and a delicate, silken-textured palate. This is sedate, refined, and long, with the sense of buoyancy and liquid florality lending the finish an especially ethereal aspect. It will be fascinating to follow over – I suspect – the next 15 or more years. Eva Fricke works full-time with Johannes Leitz in Rudesheim. “I started out with a Rudesheimer Berg Rottland idea,” she says, but then she looked downstream and around the great northerly curve in the Rhine to Lorch and Lorchhausen, “and I saw these soils, these old vines, and these exposures and I though ‘that’s just got to turn out well.’” She now owns as well as rents tiny plots in those villages. The results (based on my assessment of these 2008s – Fricke in fact began, with two wines, in 2006) are impressive if tending toward austerity, and reflect the unique character of Riesling from these steep slate sites, which – meant as absolutely no criticism – is more Mittelrhein- than Rheingau-like. I should note that Fricke says her experience thus far indicates that her wines need half a year to truly recover from bottling, which these 2008s were not even close to having received when I tasted them last September.Importer: Farm Wine Imports, Sausalito, CA; tel. (415) 331-4906