2005 Joh. Jos. Prüm Bernkasteler Badstube Riesling Spätlese

The 2005 Bernkasteler Badstube Riesling Spatlese – like the other Prum wines I tasted, finished but not yet bottled – while undeniably rich, retains remarkably bright, fresh, crisp fruit and citrus acidity as well as pleasantly tart and chewy citrus zest and berry skin notes, nicely offsetting the sweetness and lending an invigorating drinkability that one does not always associate with the wines of this estate in their extreme youth. Deep suggestions of toasted walnut, cherry pit, and wet stone inform the silken-textured palate of this ravishing juicy, bell-clear Riesling. The nose of cherry, citrus, and spice is very slightly muted by fermentative aromas but the rest of this wine represents unrestrained satisfaction that one could begin deriving surprisingly early or defer for several decades. “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