While harvested from Bruno Schmitt’s vines as part of their collaboration, Loewen has bottled a 2010 Longuicher Maximiner Herrenberg Riesling Auslese gold capsule under his own label. (A “regular” Auslese is reviewed in this report under Schmitt-Wagner.) A product of selective sorting for around 50% botrytized berries from the material that became this year’s Schmitt-Wagner Beerenauslese, this gold capsule Auslese evokes red raspberry and lingonberry jellies laced with fresh lime and honey. Buoyant and glossy, its efficacious acidity rendering it positively refreshing despite its huge ripeness and botrytis component, and quite restrained in sweetness despite its more than 130 grams of residual sugar, this penetrates with impressive purity and length as well as saliva-inducing salinity. Like other nobly sweet 2010s from Loewen, I suspect it will gain complexity with bottle age, and here I would anticipate at least a quarter century of stamina. “Nobody knew what to do” in the fall of 2010, maintains Karl-Josef Loewen, “because nobody had every witnessed anything like such a vintage.” He took all but a few of his musts down by one and a half grams of acid using calcium carbonate, which still left them plenty high. “I suspect that if you analyze my wines this year – just as with many classic Mosel Rieslings of a bygone era – you’ll find that some harbor a bit of lactic acid; but I did nothing to encourage malo and none of my wines experienced any profound malo-lactic transformation. What’s more, given the low acidity we are expecting in 2011, I would not want to be one of those growers who invited malo-lactic bacteria to have the run of my cellar. But this much is certain,” he adds: “if you had green, under-ripe aromas in the must this year, then you were never going to get rid of them by any means.” Loewen tends to welcome botrytis, and I can’t help wondering whether that has proven the Achilles heel for some of his drier 2010s, for which berries are generally crushed (this year at times foot-trodden) and given up to 12 hours of skin contact before pressing, techniques that, he acknowledges, should generally presuppose essentially healthy fruit.Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300