A ripe version, with a good amount of sweetness to the quince paste, citrus oil and verbena flavors. Lip-smacking acidity provides balance and gives this energy to expand on the finish. Drink now through 2025. 500 cases made, 125 cases imported.??–AZ??Region: Germany / Mosel Select to Add

Comprising the Vorlese (literally “pre-harvest”) pulled out early from all of her parcels in Apotheke, Eva Clusserath’s 2010 Trittenheimer Apotheke Riesling Kabinett displays fusil and wet stone notes on the nose that mingle with faintly cheesy, yeasty elements such as one encounters quite frequently in young residually sweet wines at this address. On the palate, though, this is already full of charm, with delightful delicacy and refreshment, balancing fresh lemon against a lightly-honeyed sense of liquid floral perfume, and displaying just a hint of sweet-sour agitation in its persistent finish. Look for this to become significantly more expressive – probably even short term – and be worth following for the at least the better part of two decades. Eva Clusserath was among the many to experience a commercially depressing 2010 vintage. “We went as many as three or four times into the same vineyard to optimize ripeness,” she reports, and in the face of all that expensive labor, volumes were down by close to half. Clusserath double-salt de-acidified the must for her basic dry wine, but otherwise says she waited as long as she could to harvest (beginning only near the end of October) and arrived at total acidity in her other musts of around ten grams, extremely moderate by vintage standards (not to mention lower than Clusserath’s husband Philipp Wittmann registered in Rheinhessen!). And as usual at this address, a day or more of skin contact was permitted for the dry wines; and all of the wines stayed on their fine lees until bottling, which ranged from late May though July. Together with losses during fermentation and to tartrate precipitation, these factors resulted in wines whose finished acid levels would not even raise an eyebrow on the Mosel, something one can claim for very few 2010s. Yet ironically, despite that analytical fact, these wines are recognizably of their vintage in terms of their relatively sharp corners and in the best instances productive tension, vivacity and invigoration.Importer: Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799

Fusil and faintly fermentative notes shadow aromas of clover, honeysuckle, and apple on the nose of Eva Clusserath’s 2009 Trittenheimer Apotheke Riesling Kabinett. Delicately delicious, with a sprightly interplay of stony, saline, floral, and ripely fruity flavors informing a lip-smackingly irresistible finish, this excellent value ought to be well worth following for 15 or more years, and indeed will, I suspect, be more expressive in 3-5. Eva Clusserath – for more about the recent and significant evolution of whose family estate consult in particular my report in issue 187 – adjudged the quality of her 2009 grapes “super” and did not pick the last of them until mid-November. No bottling took place until June, but several wines had only recently or not even finished fermenting by then and so were bottled at the end of the summer. (Unfortunately, Eva Clusserath forgot to bring a bottle of this year’s Auslese – picked out from various parcels in the Apotheke – to our tasting in Rheinhessen chez Clusserath & Wittmann; and as one thing led to another in the course of an extremely tight schedule, I was subsequently unable to connect-up with a bottle.)Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300