2005 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese LGK

In Prum’s 2005 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese Long Gold Capsule A.P. #24 – again, destined for auction – one immediately notices a new dimension of spiciness and fruit in the nose and on the palate: nutmeg, cocoa powder, marzipan, fig, date, and sultana, as well as a new level of creamy, silky viscosity. Quince preserve, caramelized apple, and vanilla cream emerge in a more site-typical fashion, in this wine’s extraordinarily imposing finish, from amid its bounty of fruits and spices. A sense of refinement and near-weightlessness prevail for all of the wine’s sheer viscosity, and I don’t doubt that this will outlive the overwhelming majority of present readers. “We made what I think was the right decision to harvest relatively early,” says Manfred Prum, before botrytis became the most prominent element in the wines’ character as in his opinion had been the case in 1976. Still, the Prums were blessed this year with terrific quality but cursed with a dearth of material that could legitimately be bottled even as Spatlese let alone Kabinett. (Note: There is usually more than one bottling and therefore more than one eventual A.P. number chez Prum for any given Kabinett or non-auction Spatlese and even some Auslesen. The differences in character, they promise, are kept to a minimum, and indeed in many cases it is a matter of the same base wine temporarily stored in more than one tank. For that reason, I was as usual not privy to the A.P. numbers of the un-bottled, non-auction wines that I tasted.) Various importers including P. J. Valckenberg International, Tulsa, OK; tel. (918) 622-0424 and Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. (800) 596-9463