Busch’s 2005 Pundericher Marienburg Riesling Spatlese Falkenlay – grown on grey slate – displays a lot of primary, youthful yeastiness and a (for Riesling) striking degree of creaminess and lees-inflection on the palate. Exotic Persian melon, banana, maracuja and nut oils envelop the palate, and if there can be such a thing as cream-of-slate, this striking wine is it, with a bitter-sweet, honeyed, malted, broad, yet subtly stony and nearly-dry finish. Only a trace of heat is evinced by 13.5% alcohol. Clemens Busch farms the steep slopes of the once-famous Pundericher Marienburg on the Lower Mosel entirely organically, which make him unique in the region and a source of wonder for his fellow vintners. Most of his top wines are labeled with their old pre-1971 site names. (Increasingly many growers are managing to get away with this.) Busch has been bottling nobly sweet Riesling since 1999, but never before – he hastens to inform me – in quantities remotely like those that nature imposed on him in 2006: Nine Auslesen, three Beerenauslesen, and a T.B.A.! Like Reinhard Lowenstein (and in a similar style), Busch is best-known inside Germany for his dry (or near-dry) single-site wines, which are not released for more than a year after harvest. (In fact, most of the 2006s had not finished fermenting yet when I visited last summer.)Mosel Wine Merchant selections (various importers), Trier, Gemany; fax 011 49 (0)651-14551 39; also imported by by Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR; tel. 888-274-4312