2010 Saarburger Rausch Spatlese

The 2010 Saarburger Rausch Riesling Spatlese A.P. #8 leads with alkaline, crushed stone, smoky mineral notes sitting atop effusive mango, Persian melon, Rainier cherry, and pink grapefruit such as one would in a more typical Zilliken line-up come midway through the Auslesen (but wait ... this is midway through a bunch of Auslesen, really). While the transparently tropical and now shimmering underlying mineral motifs persist on the palate, now brown spice-tinged, this exhibits a levity and vivacity that such signals of advanced ripeness and botrytization probably will not have led you to expect. The long finish manages to both sooth and stimulate. Hauntingly alluring suggestions of rowan, heliotrope, lily, and almond extract well-up as you work this around in the mouth, and persist in the empty glass, still subtly shrouded by smoke. This rivetingly complex and seductive Spatlese should be worth following for 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 genuine B.A. or T.B.A. character. An “I-don’t-know-how-they-did-it, but” feeling accompanied me as I toured what this estate had wrought in 2010. Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA 800 596 9463

Gentle aromas of delicate fruit and almost smoky minerality are given a very racy direction by mouth-puckering acidity. Maybe the expression of fruit is not quite as exotic as in previous vintages, but this is more than amply compensated for by a very precise definition of the individual components of sweetness, acidity and minerality. This Spätlese will still be invigorating and racy in twenty years time. (MS)