2010 - Wolfer Goldgrube Riesling Auslese, Vollenweider

Pale golden yellow. Subtle aromas of quince, passion fruit and clove, with only a hint of honeyed botrytis. Candied passion fruit with a creamy texture belie the tonic acidity that emerges at the back of the palate. Mineral salts add character to the satisfying finish.

Selected-out over a range of parcels, the fruit for Vollenweider’s 2010 Wolfer Goldgrube Riesling Auslese was almost entirely botrytized; yet, as he points out, the wine’s brightness and clarity belie that fact. Lemon rind and radish lend aromatic prickle, while nectarine and lime reminiscent of this year’s Steffensberg Spatlese are delivered in an especially concentrated, bright form on the palate, along with Persian and honeydew melon that add succulence to what would otherwise be an almost Eiswein-like essay in high ripeness and simultaneously high acidity. This finishes with persistent, pointed, prickly intensity as well as invigoration and refreshment. I would expect it to hold up energetically for 25 or more years, though I won’t try to speculate on possible personality evolution. In 2010, Daniel Vollenweider’s suffered roughly a two-thirds crop loss vis-a-vis his normal expectations. Picking of this depleted vintage began already on October 8 and was finished at month’s end. “It wasn’t a year of great phenolic ripeness,” he reports candidly, “and picking decisions were incredibly difficult.” Vollenweider extended skin contact and bottled most of his wines later than usual in order to afford his young wines longer time on their lees. Only a single trocken lot was acid-adjusted, and then merely by one gram, with calcium carbonate. “I would have been happy to let at least some lots – in particular for my dry wine – go through malo,” he remarks, “but my pH levels were so low that there was not a chance of that happening.” Levels of residual sugar are significantly higher in this year’s sweet wines than Vollenweider’s already high norm, but as he asserts “they need this, definitively, to balance out such high acids,” and the net effect is by no means a sweeter taste. Reductive and sulfur-related notes are even a bit more frequently evidence here than one already anticipates at this address, and Vollenweider hypothesizes that the wines’ low pHs led to a tempor