The 2005 Pundericher Marienburg Riesling Spatlese Weissenberg – from red slate – smells of honey-laced green tea. Polished, creamy, and (even at 12.5% alcohol) quite delicate on the palate, its quince and white peach are glazed with honey and tinged with smokiness as well as saline, wet stone mineral suggestions. The finish really billows, and despite the strong notes of ripeness and 25 grams of residual sugar, tastes almost dry. Busch says Riesling from this site is always slow to develop, and I don’t doubt that in bottle that could add up to 7-10 years’ potential. 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