Ratzenberg advertised his 2007 Bacharacher Kloster Furstental Riesling Eiswein as having come from healthy fruit, but smoky, nose-prickling emanations from the glass suggest rot, not just frost to me. On the palate, this is very sweet, suggesting peach preserves, caramel, candied citrus rind, and vanilla-licorice candies, with enough fresh lemon and pineapple to leaven it and to generate piercing back-end brightness. It needs to harmonize a bit, and I think I would want to revisit it before pronouncing on its life expectancy, but its sheer intensity is formidable, and it will certainly continue to make a big statement in the glass over at least the next decade. Jochen Ratzenberger Jr. expressed delight with his 2007s, and even though I’m straining to recollect a vintage with which he wasn’t pleased, the truth is, he and his father comprise one of the most consistently high-performance teams in German viticulture, and their 2007 collection is consistently impressive. Both of the Ratzenbergers’ 2007 vintage Grosse Gewachse – in what has been fairly typical behavior – finished fermenting only in mid-August, and were immediately bottled with barely enough time to appear at the annual Berlin Presentation of Germany’s collective wines in this genreImported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644