Eva Fricke Rheingau Riesling Trocken

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Fricke's 2011 Rheingau Riesling trocken incorporates one-third each fruit from her vineyards in Lorch; from sites farmed by Leitz in Geisenheim and Rudesheim; and from Kiedrich and Walluf vineyards she rents in association with her winemaking facility. High-toned aromas of fresh and distilled mirabelle, pungent lemon rind, mothball and piquant fruit pit set the stage for a firm, tart-edged, and stony palate impression, its finish shading toward bitterness but invigoratingly persistent. I would plan on drinking this by 2015. Having left her position as operations manager at Leitz – where she is still a trusted source of advice – Eva Fricke is now concentrating all of her efforts on her own Kiedrich-based but Lorch-oriented estate (for more information about which, consult especially my report in Issue 192). Beginning in 2011, all of her vineyards in Lorch are organically farmed. Like many Rheingau growers, Fricke had the dispiriting task in mid-September, 2011 of organizing a harvest just to cut out bunches with acetification or rot. (Even so, the eventual yield was high by Lorch or Fricke standards.) Fortunately, the weather played along, and after having purged her vineyards, she was able to call a week’s pause before embarking on real harvest. “Because the fruit was coming in warm,” she relates, “we rented a refrigerated container to cool it down overnight before pressing. We used dry ice, too, while bringing the grapes in, but that would never have been sufficient this year.” Fricke substituted a more rapid and efficient press for the basket press that had been acquired in 2010 and which will normally remain her preference. “After mid-October,” she adds, “it finally got genuinely cold and then we were able to give a few lots some skin contact before basket-pressing.” The 2011s fermented relatively rapidly by Fricke’s standards – some with added yeasts, some without – and were bottled in March, significantly earlier in the calendar year than usual here but, as she points out, not too much longer after harvest, which was 2-3 weeks earlier than any in the admittedly rather short history of this estate. Importer: Bonhomie Wine Imports, South Orange, NJ; tel. (973) 821-5110