Clemens Busch Pundericher Marienburg Riesling Falkenlay

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As usual, having been based on an especially high must weight and finished legally halbtrocken, Busch’s 2011 Pundericher Marienburg Falkenlay Riesling features some of the smoky, toasty nut-oil character that accrues to so many of its stable mates. Pear and peach are prominently marked by the piquancy of their pit and pip, which serve for counterpoint to the lushness and faint oiliness of texture as well as lusciousness of ripe fruit on display. An alkaline, fusil aura hangs over this performance, and it finishes with an emphasis on pith and piquancy, yet with admirable primary juiciness and preservation of nuance, even allowing for a faint hint of warmth. This ought to be well worth following for at least 3-4 years and quite possibly considerably longer. For its aggregate of quality and quantity, insists Clemens Busch, 2011 was about as good as he’s ever gotten, even allowing for crop lost to downy mildew, to the late August hail storm, and to the consequent need to eliminate some early, negative botrytis. But he readily admits that the thin-skinned berries wouldn’t have held out more than a few additional days if the September rains hadn’t stopped. While a bit of wine was harvested already in the first days of October, he reports that the weather turned so warm he declared a week-long moratorium on picking. That, he says, was the second existentially critical point in this vintage’s history, because had the October heat continued, it, too, would have spoiled success. That there was considerable botrytis is testified to by this year’s range of ennoble bottlings – largely late-picked, and even those gold capsule designated approaching 200 liters each – and is probably connected with Busch’s organic and biodynamic vineyard regimen. For whatever reason, notes Busch, botrytis-affected musts this year seldom exhibited enhanced acidity; and that proved, to my palate, a handicap for some of them. Picking continued until November 20, which is about as late as any German grower was still at it in 2011. Passive lees contact, Busch opines, was key to providing needed structure and flavor definition to wines from this vintage’s high-sugar, relatively low-acid musts from thin-skinned berries, and I can only add that it almost surely helped in buffering the several bottlings that strayed into 14% alcohol territory. Most of the Busch 2011s were not bottled before mid-summer, and high-sugar musts were still fermenting or had only just ceased fermenting last September and were not to be bottled until after the harvest or possibly even after the new year, so that among dry-tasting single vineyard wines I could not taste Fahrlay-Terrassen, Felsenterrasse or Raffes. (By the same token, I report below on a couple of 2010s that had not yet been amenable to assessment when I reported on the bulk of Busch’s 2010s in issue 199.) Busch has acquired the excellent former local Lenz-Dahm cellar, where his stocks will henceforth be more adequately accommodated than they were in warehouse-like conditions, but vinification will continue to take place at the familiar home venue. As part of the deal, yet more vineyards were acquired, reinforcing what is now Busch’s overwhelming dominance of the Marienburg. As he never tires of pointing out, other growers could have made something of their precious legacy but found the rigor of farming such steep, terraced sites – effectively accessible from the village only by boat – too onerous; and sold-out to him over the years. Both Busch sons have become increasingly involved in their parents’ labors in recent years, the elder having focused on the evolution of the estate’s biodynamic regimen, and currently embarked on an extended work-residence in France.Imported by Louis/Dressner Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 334-8191

Busch’s legally halbtrocken but dry-tasting 2010 Pundericher Marienburg Falkenlay Riesling has entirely overcome the handicaps I found and reservations I expressed in my issue 199 report. Mingling white peach, white currant lime and white grapefruit as before and with smoky, salty, pungent and stony persistence, it now manages to project an abundance of sheer juiciness, setting up a shimmering dynamic and putting its pronouncedly piquant – nutty and cyanic – aspects into proportional perspective. I am even more puzzled by its earlier behavior than when I hypothesized about it in issue 199, but no matter: this is singing now, and likely to perform well for another 4-6 years. (When Busch told me the bottle I’d just tasted from had been open for a week, I began to consider a new hypothesis as to why this showed so awkwardly the last time.) For its aggregate of quality and quantity, insists Clemens Busch, 2011 was about as good as he’s ever gotten, even allowing for crop lost to downy mildew, to the late August hail storm, and to the consequent need to eliminate some early, negative botrytis. But he readily admits that the thin-skinned berries wouldn’t have held out more than a few additional days if the September rains hadn’t stopped. While a bit of wine was harvested already in the first days of October, he reports that the weather turned so warm he declared a week-long moratorium on picking. That, he says, was the second existentially critical point in this vintage’s history, because had the October heat continued, it, too, would have spoiled success. That there was considerable botrytis is testified to by this year’s range of ennoble bottlings – largely late-picked, and even those gold capsule designated approaching 200 liters each – and is probably connected with Busch’s organic and biodynamic vineyard regimen. For whatever reason, notes Busch, botrytis-affected musts this year seldom exhibited enhanced acidity; and that proved, to my palate, a handicap for some of them. Picking continued until November 20, which is about as late as any German grower was still at it in 2011. Passive lees contact, Busch opines, was key to providing needed structure and flavor definition to wines from this vintage’s high-sugar, relatively low-acid musts from thin-skinned berries, and I can only add that it almost surely helped in buffering the several bottlings that strayed into 14% alcohol territory. Most of the Busch 2011s were not bottled before mid-summer, and high-sugar musts were still fermenting or had only just ceased fermenting last September and were not to be bottled until after the harvest or possibly even after the new year, so that among dry-tasting single vineyard wines I could not taste Fahrlay-Terrassen, Felsenterrasse or Raffes. (By the same token, I report below on a couple of 2010s that had not yet been amenable to assessment when I reported on the bulk of Busch’s 2010s in issue 199.) Busch has acquired the excellent former local Lenz-Dahm cellar, where his stocks will henceforth be more adequately accommodated than they were in warehouse-like conditions, but vinification will continue to take place at the familiar home venue. As part of the deal, yet more vineyards were acquired, reinforcing what is now Busch’s overwhelming dominance of the Marienburg. As he never tires of pointing out, other growers could have made something of their precious legacy but found the rigor of farming such steep, terraced sites – effectively accessible from the village only by boat – too onerous; and sold-out to him over the years. Both Busch sons have become increasingly involved in their parents’ labors in recent years, the elder having focused on the evolution of the estate’s biodynamic regimen, and currently embarked on an extended work-residence in France.Imported by Louis/Dressner Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 334-8191

Tasted just before bottling, the Busch 2009 Pundericher Marienburg Falkenlay Riesling mingles yeasty fermentative notes with high-toned distilled plum. It evinces a lovely interplay on a firm palate of distilled and fresh pit fruits with alkaline, stony, and bittersweetly herbal elements. Full and dry-tasting yet buoyant and with lip-smacking primary sap in its dynamic finish, this should prove yet more expressive and texturally refined once bottled and rested, and be worth following for at least 6-8 years. “It was no lovely autumn,” notes Clemens Busch candidly. “We had to pick our botrytis wines very early. We had regular rain from the end of October on, and one really had to take great advantage of the dry days to finish.” Busch reports that while his lower-tier lots largely fermented unproblematically to dryness, his riper single-vineyard bottlings were sluggish, several ending up in the legally halbtrocken territory that I have personally tended to prefer at this address, not least because of the tendency for the trocken lots to betray elevated alcohol. Busch – for more about whose methods, style, and vineyards consult the estate introductions as well as the tasting notes in others of my recent Mosel reports – is unwilling to employ cultured yeasts or otherwise intervene to achieve legal dryness. In view of an unfounded and frankly uninformed phobia many Riesling lovers have when it comes to the very idea, it should be pointed out that most of Busch’s dry-tasting Rieslings have since 2001 undergone malo-lactic transformation. That did not however happen with his 2008s (whose high pH levels precluded it) and only selectively with these 2009s. Furthermore, in Busch’s cellar, this transformation – normally not profound, as his ripe fruit is typically not high in malic acid – generally takes place as an interruption during – rather than subsequent to – the alcoholic fermentation. This peculiarity, he contends, explains the absence of diacetyl or other problematic potential byproducts. Even the lighter cuvees here were not bottled until the three weeks leading up to my mid-September visit, and among those wines then being prepped for bottling were a Felsterrasse and Raffes too shaken-up from filtration for me to judge. That the nobly sweet wines here are as notable for their high quality as their abundance I suppose doesn’t need repeating, provided you survey my ratings.Mosel Wine Merchant Trier, Germany (various importers); tel. (413) 429-6176; +49 (0) 651 14551 38; also imported by Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR tel. 888 274 4312

Busch’s 2008 Pundericher Marienburg Falkenlay Riesling represents the roughly half of Falkenlay Riesling destined for Trockenheit that did not make it, and while Busch explained (see my note on the corresponding Grosses Gewachs) that it was on account of the manifestly high quality of the dry half that he elected to bottle the two separately, this legally halbtrocken version has its own manifest virtues. Musky narcissus-like floral notes along with scents of almond and ripe peach usher in a palate warm not in the alcoholic sense but rather in terms of a more welcoming richness than displayed by most of Busch’s dry-tasting 2008s. (And yes, I am aware that this comment exposes me as a wimp for a large segment of German readership, journalists, and wine growers, because I’m showing preference for a Riesling that has a bit higher residual sugar, rather than a “principled, trocken wine.”) Here we have a combination of creaminess of texture with vivacity, and transparency not to a hard stoniness or pungent smokiness but to the interplay of nuanced mineral, floral, and fruit elements. There’s something almost crystalline and prismatic about the effect. I feel more comfortable, too, in predicting the likelihood that this genuinely elegant effort will be worth following for a decade. Interestingly, this half of the 2008 Falkenlay came from a portion of the site where ancient, ungrafted vines are interspersed with younger, clonal, wire-trained plants, with the result that the must weight was a bit higher and, opines Busch, the concentration of flavor slightly less.Clemens Busch – for more about whose impressive efforts in organically farming diverse sites the length of the long, steep Marienburg consult my reports in issues 179 and 185 – pushed many of his 2008s to extremes of dryness or sweetness. The majority of his dry-tasting wines – most of which did not finish fermenting until early summer – were rendered legally trocken (some of them offered as Grosse Gewachse and some to be released late), and while alcohol per se was seldom a problem this year, I found some of these wines austere, inelegant and charmless. (Dry wines here, incidentally, often go through malolactic transformation, but apparently due to such low pHs in 2008, only a single lot did so. There was however, reports Busch, extensive tartrate precipitation, which lowered the levels of tartaric acid, but automatically enhanced the ratio of green apply malic acidity.) This is not to say there aren’t many bottlings I found impressive and even beautiful in the present collection, especially – for those who don’t mind very prominent sweetness – the range of ennobled wines. Busch didn’t even launch his “pre-harvest” passes through the vineyards until nearly mid-October, and began serious harvesting only toward the end of that month, finishing in the third week of November, “but,” as he says, “it was a harvest that demanded a lot of time, because one day you could pick, and the next you had to wait” due to inclement weather, “and the botrytis often developed negatively,” demanding painstaking selection. Apropos the precariousness of Mosel wine culture, here is an amazing statistical anecdote Busch offered. The quality and character of his wines, he believes, is dependent on the high percentage of ancient vines trained in the traditional manner (a.k.a. Stockkultur) to a single stake, with two canes. A single, middle-aged woman who has no protegee is responsible for binding the canes on 80% of Busch’s roughly 25 acres of vines, a talent she acquired out of personal passion, and one that only a handful of even septuagenarian Moselaner any longer possess!Mosel Wine Merchant selections (various importers), Trier, Germany; fax 011 49 (0)651-14551 39; also imported by Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR tel. 888 274 4312

Busch’s 2007 Pundericher Marienburg Riesling Falkenlay grown on grey slate smells exotically of Persian melon, coconut, buddleia, and heliotrope. Imposingly rich and creamy on the palate, with strong nut paste and coconut milk character and persistent, wafting floral perfume, this is has the positive aspects of a seamless Auslese, but with barely a hint of sweetness, and none of the roughness or aggressive ripeness of the corresponding Fahrlay, even though Busch readily confirms that the impression of boyrytis here does not deceive. Grapefruit citricity serves for a sense of liveliness, and – along with the very faint bitterness of botrytis in the finish – serves to keep the formidably long tropically rich, subtly zesty finish here from tasting at all overtly sweet. This is a formidable example of the combination of volume and richness that can if a grower chooses be expressed in Mosel slate, yet all the while projecting elegance and refinement. Clemens Busch – among the Mosel’s few organic vintners, and the undisputed champion of the Lower Mosel’s steep Pundericher Marienburg – is also rapidly demonstrating that he is simply one of the collective Mosel, Saar, and Ruwer’s exceptional talents, not to mention stylistically free spirits. Most of his top wines are labeled with their old pre-1971 site names. Nature thrust on him in 2006 an unprecedented 9 Auslesen (many distinguished only by number), 3 Beerenauslesen, and single T.B.A. (most of which were reviewed in issue 179). In 2007, an at least slightly more normal – not to mention more marketable – balance of dry-tasting (though not always legally trocken) wines was restored, but success, Busch insists, was possible only by dint of great patience and then, when the time was ripe for picking, in great haste. A considerable number of overtly nobly sweet wine was picked in the process, as there was no lack of botrytis in this fungicide-free zone.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