Riesling Trocken Schmitt Selbach-Oster 92swj 2009

Winemaker's Notes:

"Bone-yellow hue. Presents a fascinating array of gooseberry, petrol, and honey scents. Taut and serious on the attack. Excellent concentration and grip on the midpalate, where notes of guava and ripe pears coalesce nicely...92" SWJ 7/11 "After the string of remarkable successes that Johannes Selbach has scored with block-pickings from this particular parcel it’s perhaps not surprising both that he essayed this year a dry version – 2009 Zeltinger Schlossberg Riesling trocken Schmitt – and that, warming up to his narration, he now refers to “this parcel behind the church and above the cemetery” where his father, Hans Selbach is buried as “the best in the Schlossberg if not at our estate. Papa – who had plenty of experience and was no follower of trends –used to say ‘you all go on about terroir; then you make three passes on the vineyards carrying three buckets, selecting with fancy finger work, then afterwards you say “so, that’s how the vineyard tastes.” Not a bit true! If you want the taste of terroir, keep your fingers out of it and pick everything en bloc.’” Not that this product of a November 18 picking is an exercise in methode ancienne, though, because Selbach decided to vinify both this and his “Anrecht” bottling from the Himmelreich entirely in stainless steel – a treatment generally accorded to at most a handful of chosen wines each vintage; the rest receiving at least in part a traditional fuder-elevage. His notion was that this might permit a clearer look at their terroir character. Grapefruit, quince, mirabelle, nut oils, wet stone, green tea, shrimp shell reduction, and smoky suggestions of peat and smoldering embers inform an intriguing nose and a densely-layered, silken-textured palate. This finishes in myriad registers, powerful yet focused and saliva-inducing. As it opens, it continues to display a greater sense of interactive complexity. Not only does this crave air, it also demands attention. Follow it and be fascinated for the next dozen or more years. ..91" WA 12/10