A Staatsweinguter 2009 Rauenthaler Baiken Riesling Auslese evinces an aggressively pungent, prickly, spicy, fungal manifestation of botrytis. On the palate, it unfortunately displays an advanced degree of the sort of diffusion of flavor witnessed with other Baiken bottlings in this collection. Faintly saline and piquantly cyanic fruit pit notes add what interest there is to the sweetly persistent finish. I wish that I had had opportunity to re-taste this, but I also wish I could conceive of there being anything about its disappointing performance that might be attributable to the condition of the bottle or stage of evolution. The winery team that showed it to me considered it representative. I would chalk this up to further proof that what relatively little botrytis there was in 2009 was not always the vintners or Riesling lovers friend. Director Dieter Greiner, oenologist Ralf Bengel, and estate manager Stefan Seyffardt are by now presumably fully at home in their vast and sophisticated new facility. A couple of additional and striking changes have occurred in the Hessian State Domaines line-up since last year, include screw-cap bottling for virtually every wine regardless of style or Pradikat, and a drastic reduction in the number of individual bottlings, so that now – much more even than, say, at Schloss Schonborn – generic cuvees are blended from across an enormously wide range of sites that must count as fabulous in any estates hands but no longer receive dedicated bottling at this address; and many combinations of site, style, and Pradikat that have venerable predecessors here are now unlikely ever to recur. As a capitulation to practical, economic realities, this latter development is understandable, but I confess to some sadness that it has to be so, especially in light of the immense and potentially intricate technical capabilities of the estates new cellar. (For earlier – but still recent – important changes in this huge estate and its wine nomenclature, consult issue 185. The brand designation “Crescentia” appears on a range of single-vineyard bottlings – though I have mentioned it below only in connection with the non-vineyard-designated Pinot – and the term “Cabinetkeller” on the ostensibly best wines, an allusion to the once widely-used approbation “Cabinet,” which originated at this address in the 18th century but was outlawed from German wine labels in 1971.) One consequence of a reduced number of bottlings is that the wines I was able to taste in September and on which I am reporting here comprise not a selected subset as before, but rather virtually the entire vintage collection, including all of its major Riesling bottlings.Importers include Dee Vine Wines, San Francisco, CA; tel. (877) 389-9463 and P. J. Valckenberg International, Tulsa, OK; tel. 918 622 0424
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