2011 Wolfer Goldgrube Spatlese GK

Vollenweider’s 2011 Wolfer Goldgrube Riesling Spatlese gold capsule represents a lightly botrytis-affected selection from his oldest vines (and this vintage’s Goldgrube Riesling trocken – which was not yet ready to be tasted when I last visited him – represents subsequently-sorted fruit from the same picking). Golden Delicious apple and almost overripe Persian melon in the nose mingle with slender rivulets of honey and caramel on a luscious, silken, expansive palate. This unapologetically sweet, buoyant Riesling doesn’t offer interplay or refreshment, but instead concentrates on offering enveloping richness and a soothingly sustained finish. Greater complexity and definition may well arrive with time in bottle, of which I am confident that this can handle at least 15-20 years. Daniel Vollenweider lost considerable crop to the savage August, 2011 hailstorm, which hit Krov full-force rendering awesome damage to virtually every slate rooftop, window, and exposed plaster wall in the village. Fortunately, the next-door vineyards of Wolf were largely spared. Picking began October 6 and was finished well before month’s end. Nobly sweet wines were selected-out over the course of the harvest and Vollenweider reports not having had to contend with negative rot. All of those botrytis selections weighed at minimum 140 Oechsle, so the resultant wines begin with gold capsule Auslese, leapfrogging “regular” Auslese as it were. Not atypically for this estate, both a dry wine from the Schimbock, and from the Goldgrube a dry wine, a B.A., and a T.B.A. were still (or just-finished) fermenting at the time when I tasted, and I’ll write about them when I report on the majority of Vollenweider’s 2012s. He has begun bottling a larger range of dry wines than ever before. (Vollenweider has a new importer. Retail prices pending.) Importer: Vom Boden Imports, New York, NY; info@vomboden.com