Eva Clusserath’s 2009 Trittenheimer Apotheke Riesling feinherb unites apple and crabapple in a pleasantly tart, chewy palate presentation whose sense of mouth-watering salinity and Mosel-typical wet stone adds interest and allure. Essentially dry-tasting even with 20 grams of residual sugar (and fleet of foot at 10.5% alcohol, although the label reads “11%”) it should prove versatile over the next 4-6 years if not beyond. Eva Clusserath – for more about the recent and significant evolution of whose family estate consult in particular my report in issue 187 – adjudged the quality of her 2009 grapes “super” and did not pick the last of them until mid-November. No bottling took place until June, but several wines had only recently or not even finished fermenting by then and so were bottled at the end of the summer. (Unfortunately, Eva Clusserath forgot to bring a bottle of this year’s Auslese – picked out from various parcels in the Apotheke – to our tasting in Rheinhessen chez Clusserath & Wittmann; and as one thing led to another in the course of an extremely tight schedule, I was subsequently unable to connect-up with a bottle.)Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300