Philippi and Sona offered me a late summer, 2011 opportunity to revisit several wines from one of this estate’s finest vintages of recent memory, beginning with the 2004 Kallstadter Saumagen Riesling Kabinett trocken. Alluring scents of saffron, lightly toasted almond, kirsch distillate, ginger as well as saline, alkaline sea breeze serve to introduce a deeply flavored yet buoyant and juicy palate that seems to deliver loads of both ocean water and chalk. An intricate finishing interplay against a background of profound minerality allied to buoyancy offers a superb demonstration of why “l(fā)ighter” does not mean “l(fā)esser” when it comes to Riesling! This should continue to shine for at least another couple of years, and those who purchased it (which, unfortunately, could not be easily done from the U.S. at the time) rewarded themselves with an amazing value. Bernd Philippi and cellarmaster Dominik Sona, did not begin harvesting in 2011 until mid-September and then with Pinot Blanc as well as a Riesling pre-harvest culling. Thereafter they paused, and much of the best Riesling came in early in October, with picking ending mid-month. The existence of both Spatlese and Auslese “R” bottlings that will be released much later testifies to their authors’ high opinion of this vintage. Skin contact before fermentation and lees contact during elevage were – Philippi and Sona seek to assure me – the approaches they took to 2010 acids rather than de-acidifying. Only about half of a normal crop was harvested, and hence that work went quickly, in late October. Nearly all of the results were bottled in late August. An especially tiny Riesling crop from the Annaberg was deemed too severe in acidity even for inclusion in the 2010 Gutsriesling, and was instead judiciously blended into some 2011s to lend them spine and kick. “Gewurztraminer,” claims Sona, “just didn’t taste like much of anything in 2010, so we blended that away, too, or used it as picking crew house wine. We harvested with ‘R’ bottlings in mind,” he notes, “but in the cellar no individual casks really stood out as candidates.” There is a small amount of residually sweet Saumagen Spatlese from 2010 but somehow between the estate and me we have neglected to see that I taste it, a deficiency I hope to remedy while tasting the 2012s there in 2014. Imported by Louis/Dressner Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 334 8191