Eva Fricke Lorcher Krone Riesling Spatlese, Rheingau, Germany

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Frickes 2009 Lorcher Krone Riesling Spatlese could legally have been bottled as Auslese, and at only 7.5% alcohol it is both extremely delicate and extremely sweet. Litchi, quince preserves, marzipan, and borderline overripe Persian melon inform a soothing, subtly oily palate. Perhaps some sense of mineral dimension and dynamic interaction will emerge with time, and I would certainly not hesitate to hide some of this away for at least a decade, though it will take at least that long to make even a slight dent in its superficial sense of sweetness. A hint of caramel tinges the soothingly persistent finish, reflecting the roughly 20% botrytis Fricke reports was present here.Ensconced in the cellars of the ancient Kotherhof (and former Weingut Geschwister Bibo) at the upper edge of Kiedrich, Eva Fricke – who continues as operations manager at Josef Leitz, and for more about whose own estate consult my account in issue 187 – has turned out her fourth collection from old vines in Lorchs steep, quartzite-laced slate slopes, which she says were not afflicted by the drought stress that some other growers in nearby sectors reported. While she harvested most of her holdings in the Seligmacher around mid-October, most of her Krone and Schlossberg vines were not picked until the last of that month and the first days of November, demonstrating that precipitant sugar-accumulation did not become a problem for her as it did for some growers just upstream in Rudesheim. The results are on the whole impressively complex, though with the slight down-side that low level botrytis or related fungal influence appears to have precluded the utmost clarity of which Riesling from these sites is capable. Fricke reports having had difficulty getting her wines approved for Pradikat by the local Weinkontrolle without agreeing to de-classify them to Kabinett, a situation I can only interpret as reflecting the Oechsle and residual sugar inflation nowadays so typical of Germans Riesling realm, as a result of which she has elected to henceforth dispense with Pradikat other than in rare instances of high residual sugar. Incidentally, once one gets past the generic and “village level” Rieslings trocken, production here drops to only a few hundred bottles per wine.Importer: Farm Wine Imports, Sausalito, CA; tel. (415) 331-4906

Fricke relates that her 2008 Lorcher Krone Riesling Spatlese originated largely in golden berries with some botrytis, and whose must stopped fermenting with very high residual sugar but was then blended down with the addition of a drier lot. Candied lime, green tea, honeysuckle, and quince preserves inform the nose and a delicate, silken-textured palate. This is sedate, refined, and long, with the sense of buoyancy and liquid florality lending the finish an especially ethereal aspect. It will be fascinating to follow over – I suspect – the next 15 or more years. Eva Fricke works full-time with Johannes Leitz in Rudesheim. “I started out with a Rudesheimer Berg Rottland idea,” she says, but then she looked downstream and around the great northerly curve in the Rhine to Lorch and Lorchhausen, “and I saw these soils, these old vines, and these exposures and I though ‘that’s just got to turn out well.’” She now owns as well as rents tiny plots in those villages. The results (based on my assessment of these 2008s – Fricke in fact began, with two wines, in 2006) are impressive if tending toward austerity, and reflect the unique character of Riesling from these steep slate sites, which – meant as absolutely no criticism – is more Mittelrhein- than Rheingau-like. I should note that Fricke says her experience thus far indicates that her wines need half a year to truly recover from bottling, which these 2008s were not even close to having received when I tasted them last September.Importer: Farm Wine Imports, Sausalito, CA; tel. (415) 331-4906