2004 Josef Leitz Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling Spätlese

The 2004 Rudesheimer Berg Roseneck Riesling Spatlese was showing considerable reduction and while there were some lovely fruit characteristics beneath that, the wine was in no shape to judge. Leitz’s 2004 Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling Spatlese represents botrytised fruit culled out in the process of selecting for the dry wines. Ripe peach, pear, musky florality and vanilla hover over the glass. Soft and faintly milky in texture on the palate, this is just dripping with super ripe orchard fruits and honey as well as exuding heady, musky inner-mouth gardenia-sweet florality. This wine’s finish is sweet, with vanilla and flowers accentuating the impression. I strongly suspect that it was reduced, and will both blossom and clarify over the next few months. Johannes Leitz’s acreage is now up to a whopping sixty-five, and even though much of that goes to supply ever larger quantities of a few off-dry wines that represent the backbone of his export program, the number of individual bottlings has increased as well. Still, quality remains undiminished, as does Leitz’s evident determination and enthusiasm. “This was a challenging vintage,” he reports, “which is exactly what I like. I don’t want another 2003, where you could ripen Riesling in the hinterlands and probably all the way up to Hamburg. I like a vintage where you have to struggle. And frankly, in Rudesheim, we really need cooler, ‘lousier,’ difficult vintages to show off our advantage vis a vis the rest of the Rheingau!” Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300