Analytically marginally higher in Oechsle at harvest; botrytis content; residual sugar; and acid than the corresponding A.P. #8, Zillikens’ auction cuvee 2010 Saarburger Rausch Riesling Spatlese A.P. #7 – representing one thousand-liter fuder – offers a very different personality. Sharpness – though, to be sure, also invigorating citricity and vivacity – from high acid is threaded into a dense matrix of dried quince, peach, and white raisin. Musk melon, cherry jam and blood orange – along with the latter’s bittersweet rind – emerge as this takes on air; while lift and lusciously lingering fruit demonstrate that this wine’s authors have achieved their stated goals of delicacy and a relative balance of sweetness comparable to that of the A.P. #8 yet at a higher level of ripeness. While there is welcome, saliva-drawing salinity in the finish here, the mineral and floral diversity that rendered A.P. #8 unforgettable does not (at least yet) have a counterpart in this auction bottling. But it’s early days to be sure – I can well imagine the overt density and “bit more of everything” that characterize this wine translating into a slower start – and one can expect both wines to be worth tracking and no doubt swooning-over in the course of three decades. Hanno and Dorothee Zilliken’s 2010 collection has served for some controversy in that they not only – like Schaefers in Graach – adopted the minority position that de-acidification should be to wine, not must, but also – in this respect unlike Schaefers – performed acid-adjustments throughout their residually sweet line-up. Not that the extreme nature of what they eventually bottled could possible fail in itself to raise eyebrows. To declare myself up front (not that this isn’t evident from my scores!): I found this year’s collection chez Zilliken utterly awesome and cannot imagine that somehow seeds of early decline or subsequent disappointment are harbored in any of these wines on account of their levels of acid having been trimmed from the perilous heights where nature had left them. The view is dizzying enough (as befits the name “Rausch”) at the altitudes Hanno Zilliken chose for these Rieslings’ flight paths. “It was the tiny, millerandaged berries with their thick skins and the extreme, protracted shriveling by wind and botrytis that characterized this vintage and that concentrated everything in the grapes including ripe acidity. But even such high extract and ripeness,” insists Zilliken, “often wouldn’t have sufficed to achieve balance. Maybe in their youth, but once the baby fat was gone the acids would have come through too aggressively.” He grants, though, that experience with acid levels as high as these was formerly confined to unripe vintages (such as several he suffered through when he took over his family’s estate in the 1980s) or Eiswein. “If you’re talking about a half a gram or one gram of acid adjustment, you’re talking there about 50 or 100 liters of totally de-acidified and filtered wine blended back into a thousand liter fuder, and I just don’t see any danger. For the first two weeks, all we did was seek- and pick-out shriveled material,” narrates Zilliken, who when I ask him about his “main harvest,” replies, laughing: “What harvest? There really wasn’t much left to do after that! But those grapes that did remain healthy and green were incredibly stable. We let them hang and then picked them at the very end for our dry wines which we didn’t de-acidify. There was no Q.b.A., Kabinett, or Spatlese (he means by must weight): Auslese was the least that we harvested. After the 2005s,” Zilliken sums-up, “we thought we could never again see such a vintage of superlatives; yet 2010 in some ways begins where 2005 left off.” Only in Pradikat-labeling did this differ from previous top Zilliken collections. Waiting for Eiswein was judged a fool’s errand since Eiswein-like concentration and acidity pervaded the lot, which in turn, Zilliken thought, kept any from having

Headily floral lily and heliotrope notes mark the nose of the 2007 Saarburger Rausch Riesling Spatlese A.P. #7, with lime, peach, fresh cherry, and nut oils following on the palate. At a mere 7.5% alcohol, this performs the feat familiar chez Zilliken of balancing hugely high residual sugar against efficacious acids and harboring palpable density while seeming delicate. This is infectiously juicy, lip-smacking, bright, and penetrating in length, with salt and stone nuances in the finish as well as a positive sense of fruit skin tartness adding to its sense of invigoration. Expect it to perform brilliantly for the better part of two decades. It might seem hard to believe that Hanno Zilliken could once again out-performed a vintage in the way that he did 2005 and 2006. But his having designated an unprecedented four different wines of the 2007 vintage as auction offerings certainly speaks to his confidence – well-founded, I would say – in the quality of this collection’s top end. The vintage’s “Riesling Butterfly” – stemming largely from Saarburg’s Antoniousbrunnen and Bergschlosschen vineyards (behind the Rausch, and overlooking a tiny Saar tributary) and in only small measure from the Rausch and Bockstein – was reviewed in issue 184 and remains lovely, if at present less generous than there-described. No off-dry generic estate Riesling was bottled this vintage, and with 2008 Zilliken will be seen to have made other changes in the lower half of his price list. Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA 800 596 9463