2011 Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr Grosses Gewachs

Grapefruit and papaya laced with piquant citrus rind inform an opulent, expansive palate in the Fritz Haag 2011 Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Grosses Gewachs, with pithy toasted nuttiness reinforcing the sense of bitterness in an undeniably tenacious finish. Oliver Haag opines that this is light in its way, but I’m not buying that, and not just because we have 13% alcohol here, but on account of how the wine behaves on my palate. Imposing, yes, charming, hardly. I would plan on drinking this over the next 4-5 years but monitoring its evolution carefully if planning to hold any. “We started picking at the beginning of October,” relates Oliver Haag “because must weights were already high for Kabinett, but there was good acidity.” Haag pressed whole clusters rather than either crushing or permitting skin contact for his dry wines, and tended to favor a higher percentage of stainless steel for vinification and elevage because, as he puts it, “the material was all so ripe that I was worried it would come off as too opulent and voluminous.” Without question, he thereby puts his finger on a legitimate concern, and his own wines illustrate the truth that higher alcoholic volume and opulence – no matter what appears on the Riesling’s label – aren’t necessarily virtues, and in particular not in the context of this vintage. “To convey a sense of levity this year,” notes Haag, “was not so easy. Not that there was much botrytis out there,” he adds, though fortunately that fact did not deter him from rendering several spectacular ennobled wines in small volumes. Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. (800) 596-9463