nine days, nine years in reverse
lake erie basin
Tasted Friday, January 19, 2024 - Saturday, January 27, 2024 by Putnam Weekley with 40 views
lake erie basin
Tasted Friday, January 19, 2024 - Saturday, January 27, 2024 by Putnam Weekley with 40 views
2021 Peter Lauer Riesling Barrel X feinherb 92 Points
Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer
(1/19/2024)
10.5% abv. AP "3 501 074 19- 2/22." (Check your bottle; does it end instead with "19/22"?)
NOSE: open fissures of rock, exuviating salty, brittle, bright yellow umami—like sea salted resins extracted from chamomile pollen. This opening statement turns translucent and yields to floral perfumes—lilac, ginger, lime, pear. MOUTH: certainly more relaxed than the bottle I drank a year ago. It opens with lateral faces of rinsed stone, where casual intersections occur between appetizing mineral bitterness and spring blossom acidity. The texture starts broad and ambitious (fruit, floral sweetness) before crumbling to the slicing action of structure. The finish is remarkably dry. This is a beautiful opportunity for velar agitation. Though this wine is in a relative lull in its development, it is a sensational drink, especially served at 50° F with seasoned mincemeat tacos.
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2020 Weingut Jakob Schneider Riesling Estate 91 Points
Germany, Nahe
(1/20/2024)
4/6. 12% abv. AP 33. This wine is settling nicely into a slack state of beauty and utility. Vivid perfumes (red delicious apple, cassis, pear, eucalyptus, meyer lemon) meander at a browsing pace. A sovereign's assembly of texture and punctuation manifest in acid and stone. It's oathbound dry with impulsive generosity—flagrant in fragrance; easy to grasp. Enduring bedrock sap finishes it and demands quenching with another drink (of all things!) Let me distract it with some food—the end.
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2019 Hofgut Falkenstein Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Spätlese #14 95 Points
Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer
(1/21/2024)
8% abv. AP 14. A most kind gift from the meadmaker—thank you!
NOSE: a gentle, active spring rinse over worn stone; a clever combination of peach, piña, and strawberry coulis; nutrient salt crust on iron; wry, smoky levitations of wildflower perfume. All of this moves steadily in elegant appeal—bright, clean, and weightless. I catch glimpses of marine breeze in the background and decide it plays some kind of role in the impulsion of the object. MOUTH: forget trying to isolate viscera from structure here. At no point is it sweet or weighty. However, the transparent juiciness is something familiar in much older prädikat Rieslings in top form. Allowing it to warm up to >60° only summons determined, savory acidity; it's sticky—the acid is—and it entrains various cured mints, cockle shell, worn brass, and blueberry.
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2018 Reichsrat Von Buhl Riesling Kabinett Armand 92 Points
Germany, Pfalz
(1/22/2024)
9% abv. AP 06. This is quite a bit more buttoned up than it was three years ago! The aromas are lithic, suave, oozing with root sap, and beckoning. There's chiseled majesty in its shape, with sheer sensations of lime, solar piña glaze, wasabi, and crumbled rose/chalk. A mouthful is always under tension. It is transparently flavored of bing cherry paste, pear, sour apple, marble, and sea spray. Sugar is there to be tasted, but it won't stick the whirling mechanism. Everything is harmonious and fresh. A long, dry/juicy finish is pierced with soprano sax acids (aspirated precisely) that resolve on suggestively twilit stone (petrichor.)
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2017 Kruger-Rumpf Im Pitterberg Riesling Kabinett 90 Points
Germany, Nahe
(1/23/2024)
9% abv. AP 36. EYE: bright, straw gold with a glance of green; a tall pour produced a tissue of atomized gas, reluctant to leave solution. NOSE: subdued. Steamed almond meal yields to maraschino, chervil, lime peel, and pear. MOUTH: intense, large, and explosive flavor, of pome/citrus and wilted spring herbs; unabashed, state theater stage drapes of sweetness. Active cascades of ripe, yellow, grape glycerin join bulging acidity. As the event gathers and crests, invasive relief arrives, stiff lashes of cured lemon-orchard litter—threshold nutritional birch, blonde tobacco/cinnamon oil, and thyme. Notably absent are mineral and stone sensations; no struck edges of quartz, no petrichor, no chalk—I suspect it lies under all the botany. In its weight class this is a bruiser, and fresh—it tastes half the stated age. Suburban. Semi-embalmed. If sweet-tart GG could exist ...
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2016 Alfred Merkelbach Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Spätlese halbtrocken 93 Points
Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer
(1/24/2024)
10% abv. AP 7. 62°F. NOSE: initially, sharp and hissing, with lemon oil and broken shale. After adjustment and air comes tender, humid, apple blossom petal confetti ankle-deep. Behind that, there is a surge of deep ocean saline, black cherry jam, cress/goosefoot/angelica, and milled oats. MOUTH: an electrified bony spine shrouded in sweet herbs, meyer lemon, green apple, mulling spice, and dashi. It pulses with determination, strewing organized action around the approximately linear path of the drinking event. Lithic, appetizing bitterness joins lemon-peel acid to impose a decisive, dry balance. SUMMARY: radiant clarity of flavor; muscular and restless. The last few drinks are crystaline laminar fluid folded over jagged stone—blimey. Peak bottle age won't come until after 2026.
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2015 Immich-Batterieberg Riesling Escheburg 92 Points
Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer
(1/25/2024)
12% abv. AP 02. 60° F.* Aeration is decisive and flattering.
EYE: bright brass colored with fulvous highlights. This is certainly darker than the pour I opened in March of 2022, though I'm not convinced it was the intervening 22 months that made the difference.
NOSE: gentle with intriguing impressions of scented straws and herbs. Stiff, smudged sage and pear looms in back, planted surely, along with baffled strawberry dust. Lonesome mineral and sap seasonings lurk.
MOUTH: clean and contemplative. Acid and stone are muscular and relaxed. Sepiated glare reflects from orchard blossom and meadow-grass perfume. Drinking it is boundless and cheerful. At first, the finish flags just a bit, confirming sub-optimal retail storage in the 2018-2021 time frame* (perfect storage would result in a 93-95 point pleasure measure.) And yet it remains singular and delightful.
TIME: farther down the bottle (halfway) I begin to gather a sensation of dessicated ruby grapefruit ... substrate. Why not earlier? The gradual nature of this last element causes it to be the finest manifestation, between citron and pomelo, as I have ever sensed in a wine. Later (three-quarters empty) wtf is that alluring celery/angelica solo?—lovingly arranged in tidal salts.
________
*a trick I learned from Dirk Richter: when the wine is tired, drop the temperature a little bit. At 50° F this whole event is remarkably more coherent. And also more fetching. This intervention weighs ever more decisively as aeration continues to draw the axis of flavor explosion.
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2014 Weingut Heymann-Löwenstein Hatzenporter Stolzenberg Riesling 94 Points
Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer
(1/26/2024)
12.5% abv. AP 07. 60° F. Aeration is crucial here.
NOSE: glacial till; muddled lemon; roses; pistachio/mint.
MOUTH: fossilized, weathered, brittle sheets of lifecycle-inclusive pome, piña, citrus, cherry, and scented green grape bodies; seething with mineral, in a sheer fabric that relinquishes acid in storms. I dared to take a drink in the first few minutes after opening, after a tall, beaded drizzle into the cup. That drink was useful only by contrast with what happened next. Expression continues to multiply as it drains. The pace could increase, but I'd rather encounter this in measured moments of reverence.
It's easy to let my senses glance across this object in a way that costs almost nothing in terms of attention. In that instance, this is a stoic thing, pale of spleen and steady as bedrock. It's also easy to tip into the event more directly. The latter course leads to eruptions of pluralistic enthusiasm—outbursts of laughter, hushed gasps. These are the flavors that come to mind: oils racing across root shoulders; proper southern brewed iced tea; very sweet ananassa steeped in brandy and kilned to a crust; long, loping wetland grasses; tool shops 1960-1980; triumphant acidity, trundling antique cobbles in train; voluptuous cassis ovaries, of carboniferous dimensions; poppyseed pastry filling; menthol; blue steel.
I opt for the big flavor experience. I can't think of a substitute for this sort of thing, other than, perhaps, other wines from this producer. I've been told I should find some Knebel wines.
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2013 J.B. Becker Wallufer Oberberg Riesling Kabinett "Halbtrocken" 93 Points
Germany, Rheingau
(1/27/2024)
11.5% abv. AP 07. 59° F, best at 53°F—ever fresher as the bottle drains; it gains detail.
NOSE: on opening, reluctant. It murmurs about apricots and and dried lemon. Then, it wakes up gradually, and surely, to suggest cardamom, mace, rose, anise biscotti, and salted sour peach pits, adhered with pulp surmaturité. Later still: lime green lace melting in a breeze; and maybe a bit of iron. MOUTH: this is darker and more severe than what I had in March of 2022. And yet it remains agile and transparent. Imagine sliced seville oranges passively candied on a picnic table (with the odd leaf of basil and mint.) They set tone without impelling action. The action, as it proceeds, is consumed with exotic woodland perfume and stone ruins (more Faust, less Tolkien.) My attention is drawn to the shifting configurations of this shaded exchange of structure, and that enables the aromatic front to deal its most striking blows—manifested in rinsing waves: assam tea punch cordial; vanilla pod; Lapland; smashed strawberries; kelp beds; tides.
SUMMARY: steady and clear. Purposeful. Savage elegance.
TIME: if I have one more bottle I could see no reason to resist opening it. Bespoke and sensitive menus will demand it.
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