2011 JJ Prum - Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett AP 8

2011 was a very good year. They missed out on frosts, budding was early, flowering was sunny. Green tinge. Light and introvert with notes of lime spun sugar, almost leafy. The faintest touch of smoke. After an hour in the glass, it has a heady lily perfume. Firm, super linear, fierce and fine. Underneath the scalpel of acidity there is a delicate white-peach sweetness of fruit. Really delicate. Lovely pithy length with just the very lightest hint of earthiness on the finish. More and more floral and pretty and dimpled and charming over the length of the tasting. (TC)

Prum’s 2011 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett is a tad higher in residual sugar and correspondingly lower in alcohol than its immediate stable mates, but as one would expect from this great site, if anything the taste impression is drier. A ravishing nose of heliotrope and honeysuckle, Normandy cider and wet stone establishes the common themes for a palate performance that unites delicacy, juiciness and creaminess to an uncanny degree that only a few of the best Mosel vineyards and their prime caretakers can capture. Mouthwateringly lingering and compelling of the next sip, this rarified illustration of Mosel Kabinett virtue will reward you over the next quarter century. (I recently enjoyed the sensational 1981.) Katharina Prum says her team did an extensive pre-harvest culling of negatively botrytized material in September, “but it was the beginning of October before you had the ripeness to harvest a good Kabinett.” And the Prums were very happy – over and beyond the no doubt more conspicuous successes that this vintage brought them, including the results of sparse late botrytis – to have been able to bottle a full range of Kabinetts in decent quantity; indeed, there’s marginally more Kabinett than Spatlese, something that would have been taken for granted here 25 or more years ago but is today rare. And what quality and value – not to mention age-ability – these Kabinetts offer! Relatively low – upper 20s or low 30s – residual sugar in them has meant reaching 9-9.5% alcohol, but I defy anyone to charge them with lack of delicacy. “This balance is intentionally what we’re tending toward now,” explains Prum. “Since we don’t make any trocken wines, this is our notion of a light, dry Mosel Riesling. But that doesn’t mean we did any calculations or often had to intervene. For the most part, the wines simply found their own balance.” This year’s collection at Uferalle 19 is happily notable also for wines that are nearly all frank and forthcoming, with little of the interference from fermentative afterbirth or sulfur byproducts that one must often accept early-on in the life of a vintage at this address. And, curiously, the wines from Wehlener Sonnenuhr, rather than being the most backward, were atypically open last September. It goes without saying given their long track record that these are, in general, wines to cellar long-term – even the Kabinetts among them – but you will certainly not be disappointed if you can’t restrain yourself from opening some Prum 2011s today! (As frequently explained in the context of my reviews of these wines, I am not always privy to the A.P. numbers of the bottles I sample at Joh. Jos. Prum and the family prides themselves on consistency between different but – save for their registration numbers – identically-labeled bottlings. That said, in instances where there are several otherwise eponymous 2011 bottlings and the wine in question is iconic and beloved of Riesling collectors – such as a Wehlener Spatlese or Auslese – I take the opportunity to, in this instance, supply the registration number of the bottling 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

Prum’s 2011 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett is a tad higher in residual sugar and correspondingly lower in alcohol than its immediate stable mates, but as one would expect from this great site, if anything the taste impression is drier. A ravishing nose of heliotrope and honeysuckle, Normandy cider and wet stone establishes the common themes for a palate performance that unites delicacy, juiciness and creaminess to an uncanny degree that only a few of the best Mosel vineyards and their prime caretakers can capture. Mouthwateringly lingering and compelling of the next sip, this rarified illustration of Mosel Kabinett virtue will reward you over the next quarter century. (I recently enjoyed the sensational 1981.) Apr 2013, www.robertparker.com