2011 Lorcher Schlossberg Riesling

Fricke's 2011 Lorcher Schlossberg Riesling – from old massale selection vines – was assembled from three casks which, as she relates, “I stopped in their fermentation where I thought each tasted harmoniously dry.” When the result was analyzed, it harbored 23 grams of residual sugar, yet – in contrast with how the 2009 at 28 grams behaved – still tastes essentially dry. That said, there is levity here and a reinforcement of white peach and citrus fruits that would be harder to achieve in an analytically dry wine. Crushed stone and smoke accents to pineapple, pink grapefruit, passion fruit and lychee make for colorful counterpoint on a lusciously juicy, if fundamentally, firm mid-palate. Oily, piquant accents of citrus rind are well- integrated in a sappy and persistent finish. One effect of around a third botrytis-affected fruit is a slight sense of opacity and blurring in the finish, even though it is gripping and projects a sort of cyanic glow. I would plan to follow this through 2017. Having left her position as operations manager at Leitz – where she is still a trusted source of advice – Eva Fricke is now concentrating all of her efforts on her own Kiedrich-based but Lorch-oriented estate (for more information about which, consult especially my report in Issue 192). Beginning in 2011, all of her vineyards in Lorch are organically farmed. Like many Rheingau growers, Fricke had the dispiriting task in mid-September, 2011 of organizing a harvest just to cut out bunches with acetification or rot. (Even so, the eventual yield was high by Lorch or Fricke standards.) Fortunately, the weather played along, and after having purged her vineyards, she was able to call a week’s pause before embarking on real harvest. “Because the fruit was coming in warm,” she relates, “we rented a refrigerated container to cool it down overnight before pressing. We used dry ice, too, while bringing the grapes in, but that would never have been sufficient this year.” Fricke substituted a more rapid and efficient press for the basket press that had been acquired in 2010 and which will normally remain her preference. “After mid-October,” she adds, “it finally got genuinely cold and then we were able to give a few lots some skin contact before basket-pressing.” The 2011s fermented relatively rapidly by Fricke’s standards – some with added yeasts, some without – and were bottled in March, significantly earlier in the calendar year than usual here but, as she points out, not too much longer after harvest, which was 2-3 weeks earlier than any in the admittedly rather short history of this estate. Importer: Bonhomie Wine Imports, South Orange, NJ; tel. (973) 821-5110