2011 Rudesheimer Berg Roseneck Spatlese

Leitz’s just 7.5% alcohol 2011 Rudesheimer Berg Roseneck Riesling Spatlese is correspondingly high in residual sugar, but happily not at all dominated by sweetness. Ripe white peach along with Normandy cider-like pear and apple are drizzled with fresh lime juice and wreathed in honeysuckle, their luscious alliance on a delicate, silken palate transparent to crystalline impingements reinforced by palpable residual CO2. Long, polished and pure, if somewhat static – with a seductive sense of inner-mouth perfume that grew as the wine took on air over several days – this beauty should be worth following through at least 2030 and may well be even more exciting a dozen years from now than it is today. After the amicable departure of Eva Fricke from Weingut Leitz to tend entirely to her own eponymous estate (whose wines are again profiled in the present report), young but already widely experienced Tobias Fiebrandt has assumed the role of joint winemaker-director. Picking in 2011 here stretched from the third week in September – at the very beginning, still amid warm rain – through mid-October. Picking was largely confined to mornings, especially in the early states, and employed refrigerated containers. No nobly sweet wines were essayed. Beginning with vintage 2010, Johannes Leitz announced that he was sick of endless wines designated “Alte Reben” and was banishing those words from his labels, in connection with which you will notice that each of his top vineyard designates has acquired (on a separate front label) an additional name: “Terrassen” in the case of the steep Kaisersteinfels in whose restoration Leitz has played the critical role; a more specific place-name in the case of his other dry wines from Rudesheimer Berg sites. After having tasted its inaugural 2009 bottling from three bottles in the course of more than a year, I supposed I should mention the collaboration of Southern Pfalz Pinot-specialist Friedrich Becker with Leitz on a Pinot Noir from the Geisenheimer Rothenberg that bears both of their names. I found the results gratuitously smoky and toasty yet awkwardly tart-edged, with a leathery, decadent drying finish. Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300

Intense and well sculpted. Tangy citrus with very precise fruit. Neat finish. (JR)

Crystal clear fragrance of citrus fruit is followed by racy and delicious expression of sweet grapefruit and mandarin flavours, with acidity and minerality pitched to exhilarating perfection. A Spätlese of great elegance that’s inspiring – mainly a desire for more! (MS)