Given that even Bott’s 2008 vintage “Pinots” bottling was almost excessively tart, it is little surprise that the same was true of the corresponding generic Riesling, and when I reached Bott’s 2008 Riesling Grafenreben the combination of tartness and mineral concentration was practically screaming from the glass. But there is a diversity of mineral elements at play – crushed stone, salt, fusil oils, even a slightly acrid streak – allied to mouthwatering if ultra-bright citricity that can’t help but get your attention. The bitterness of fruit pits only render this wine’s powerful, sustained finish more austere than it would already have been. If you want to follow a truly dry Riesling of uncompromising intensity then give this 6-8 years of scrutiny, but I make no guarantee as to how it will unfold. “For me it was not a classic year for V.T. or S.G.N.,” says Jean-Christophe Bott of 2009. “There was very little botrytis, and when we started picking it was with the aim to make the best possible normal range. I found most of the Gewurztraminer very aromatic and fruity, but soft and lacking the depth of their sites; too much on the varietal side, so I preferred to mostly declassify, and also because in 2008 we had a great vintage whose wines really taste of their sites.” My judgment on 2008 is qualified. Detached tartness and decidedly fungal overtones suggest that in some instances fruit had to be harvested lest it succumb to botrytis. A measure of that fungal advance is that the nobly sweet wines in the present collection are enormously high in sugar and quite strongly marked by botrytis, yet represent the product of picking entire blocks rather than bunch-selection.Various importers, including Beaune Imports, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 559 1040 and Winebow, Montvale, NJ; tel. (201) 445-0620