2010 Wiltinger Braune Kupp Spatlese Le Gallais

Almost severe in its sense of overt, palpable density, the Le Gallais 2010 Wiltinger Braune Kupp Riesling Spatlese resembles a reduction of fresh apple, cherry, and purple plum laced with lemon, and tartly chewy from fruit skin. Despite its amazing sheer concentration, I didn’t find this wine particularly suggestive of botrytis. “That’s not what you’d say if you had seen the grapes,” remarks Muller with a laugh. That noted, he adds – which I did observe – that its personality is what one would have expected knowing the vintage-typical, freakishly high dry extract and acidity it harbors. An almost flinty as well as wet stone cast contributes to this Riesling’s memorable if far from charming persistence. I suspect it will be long-lived, but whether it will gain allure I won’t try to predict. Egon Muller scored a collection of striking successes in 2010, albeit at the price of tiny yields, comparable, he notes, to those of hail- and botrytis-ravaged 2006. This paucity of juice, combined with high ripeness, is reflected in the, for this estate, very surprising presence of only one Scharzhofberger each of Pradikat Kabinett and Spatlese, consisting of an amalgamation of several tiny lots. Nor need collectors fret about the identity of A.P. #s ... save when it comes to Trockenbeerenauslese, since a second one of those was fermenting at the time of my visit. (The 2009 vintage T.B.A. reviewed in Issue 192 now carries this year’s A.P. #11 and achieved at auction last September a record price of 5300 Euros for 750 ml.) Picking began October 14, “already with beautiful botrytis,” Muller notes, and was finished before the end of the month to respect the crew’s All Saint’s holiday weekend and because – although he indicates that there was negligible rain here at the beginning of November – Muller perceived scant likely benefit to postponing passes on an already extremely light-bearing vineyard. “We picked out what little botrytis-free fruit there was intermittently through the course of the harvest,” he adds, “and de-acidified musts selectively as seemed warranted, independent of the quality (i.e. Pradikat) level in question.” Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700