Representing the very first Riesling Burklin-Wolf harvested in the vintage, their 2007 Forster Kirchenstuck Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese smells ethereally of pit fruit distillates, musky floral essences, rowan, marzipan, and fresh lime. The almost blindingly-bright citrus and chewy fruit skin characteristics by now familiar from its nobly sweet stable mates are on hand here to counter any tendency for the wine’s enormous residual sugar to rise above the merely noticeable; and for good measure, there is a strong cyanic component of peach kernel as well as pungency of zesty citrus oil and fresh ginger. Kirchenstuck-typical feral, animal elements are there in abundance, along with intense finishing salinity. Harness this and light up your entire neighborhood – or, at least, a roomful of wine lovers – anytime over the next 6-8 decades.The biodynamic Burklin-Wolf team, headed by owner Bettina Burklin and cellar master Fritz Knorr continues to excel, and few if any German estates have so successfully fulfilled or cashed in on the ideals that so many of them shared, of focusing on dry wine and on terroir distinctions. The fulfillment lies in consistently well-balanced legally trocken wines and dramatically distinctive single-site bottlings (with an internal ranking of quality rather than use of Pradikat terms or designations as “Grosses Gewachs”). As for cashing in, the prices the top crus here have been able to maintain speak for themselves, although the high quality of Burklin-Wolf’s entire line renders many of these wines excellent values. (I missed out on this year’s Altenburg or Langenmorgen, incidentally, because not a single bottle could be found left behind at the winery last September.) The range of wines readily available in the U.S. is expected to expand as part of a new import and marketing arrangement. Outbreaks of botrytis in certain sites already in late September caused some alarm, but with startling rapidity it dried into nobility so that the estate ended up with a clutch of extraordinary sweet wines featuring almost freakishly high acidity, all of them picked before any others of this year’s Rieslings.Christopher Cannan Europvin Selections (various importers), Bordeaux; fax 001-33-5 57-87-43-22