Clemens Busch Pundericher Marienburg Felsterrasse Riesling Trocken

點(diǎn)擊次數(shù)：1821

From sheltered terraces of old vines, Busch’s 2008 Pundericher Marienburg Felsterrasse Riesling smells of grapefruit zest, yellow plum, and gooseberry, with intimations of wet stone that emerge to prominence on a tart, pungent, chewy palate. This is less invigorating but also less aggressive than the Fahrlay, if on the whole still austere. There are no doubt impressive concentration and penetrating, gripping phenolics on display here, along with some suggestion of oily richness, and no doubt for some tasters (above all, I think, within Germany) this style has more appeal than it does for me. I certainly hope to have chance to taste some of these dry Busch 2008s in a couple of years to assess their evolution, and perhaps my short-sightedness. Clemens Busch – for more about whose impressive efforts in organically farming diverse sites the length of the long, steep Marienburg consult my reports in issues 179 and 185 – pushed many of his 2008s to extremes of dryness or sweetness. The majority of his dry-tasting wines – most of which did not finish fermenting until early summer – were rendered legally trocken (some of them offered as Grosse Gewachse and some to be released late), and while alcohol per se was seldom a problem this year, I found some of these wines austere, inelegant and charmless. (Dry wines here, incidentally, often go through malolactic transformation, but apparently due to such low pHs in 2008, only a single lot did so. There was however, reports Busch, extensive tartrate precipitation, which lowered the levels of tartaric acid, but automatically enhanced the ratio of green apply malic acidity.) This is not to say there aren’t many bottlings I found impressive and even beautiful in the present collection, especially – for those who don’t mind very prominent sweetness – the range of ennobled wines. Busch didn’t even launch his “pre-harvest” passes through the vineyards until nearly mid-October, and began serious harvesting only toward the end of that month, finishing in the third week of November, “but,” as he says, “it was a harvest that demanded a lot of time, because one day you could pick, and the next you had to wait” due to inclement weather, “and the botrytis often developed negatively,” demanding painstaking selection. Apropos the precariousness of Mosel wine culture, here is an amazing statistical anecdote Busch offered. The quality and character of his wines, he believes, is dependent on the high percentage of ancient vines trained in the traditional manner (a.k.a. Stockkultur) to a single stake, with two canes. A single, middle-aged woman who has no protegee is responsible for binding the canes on 80% of Busch’s roughly 25 acres of vines, a talent she acquired out of personal passion, and one that only a handful of even septuagenarian Moselaner any longer possess!Mosel Wine Merchant selections (various importers), Trier, Germany; fax 011 49 (0)651-14551 39; also imported by Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR tel. 888 274 4312