The highly discreet bit of residual sugar in Kesselstatt’s 2007 Josephshofer Riesling Kabinett feinherb brings out the rich side of the site’s typical toasted nut character as well as the lusciousness of grapefruit, orange, and pineapple, making for a striking contrast with the corresponding Grosses Gewachs. What’s more, this shares with many of its siblings a flattering creaminess of texture and sense of stuffing, while at the same time evincing a sense of elegance and lift. Brown spices, wood smoke, and wet stone add further interest to a lingering finish. I know I am being tough on many Grosses Gewachs bottlings and recognize the extent to which tastes can diverge, but frankly it’s hard for me to comprehend why one would want to consume a wine like this year’s Josefhofer Grosses Gewachs when one could instead enjoy something as expressive, charming, nuanced, Graach-typical, and above all singularly Mosel as this virtually-dry Kabinett. As for bottle aging and usefulness, I feel confident that this will stimulate appetites and compliment a wide range of cuisine for the next decade at least. Admittedly, this was among the earliest Kesselstatt 2007s to be bottled – in March – so this could account in part for its expressiveness.A protracted harvest is almost bound to be especially beneficial for an estate with such enormous and widely-scattered vine acreage as that of von Kesselstatt. The acidity in this year’s collection is almost uniformly ripe, and often noticeably low. As usual, a certain austerity accrues to a fair share of Kesslestatt’s many trocken Rieslings (wines from whose labels the last vestiges of Pradikat designations have now disappeared), but happily, alcoholic heat was scarcely a problem here this year. Interestingly, the Saar wines among these were generally especially successful regardless of style. Annegret Reh’s plan in the Kabinett segment, incidentally, is to eventually eliminate the redundancy of having both feinherb (successors to former halbtrocken) and unabashedly sweet bottlings from a single site, but instead work in the direction of merely discreet – i.e. feinherb – sweetness for most of the estate’s Kabinetts. In a sweet style, the Kesselstatt Kabinetts have consistently represented excellent values with ready market-availability, whereas few of the drier Kabinetts (and virtually none of the estate’s trocken Rieslings) seem to make it to the U.S.Various importers including: P. J. Valckenberg International, Tulsa, OK; tel (918) 622-0424.
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