2007-06-09 02:10 |
WA: Prum’s 2004 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett A.P. #9 is redolent of apple blossom, clover, honey, vanilla, lemon, and fresh yeasty notes, significantly more forthcoming than was the nose on the corresponding Graacher. In the mouth, it manages to seem virtually weightless, yet pleasantly soothing and mouth-coating in texture and satisfyingly insistent in its ester-rich apple blossom and clover inner-mouth florality. It finishes with long, pure but discrete apple, almond, and wet stone. Typically for this wine, one can look for it to gain complexity over three to five years in bottle and give pleasure for two decades. There tend to be multiple Prum bottlings of a given combinations of site and Pradikat, but I am never privy to an overview of these. To sin on the side of safety, I have noted the A.P. # for wines I tasted from bottle, but Manfred Prum routinely seeks to assure me that any alternate bottlings will not differ substantially from those I have tasted, and consistent excellence – like ageworthiness – has long been a hallmark of Joh. Jos. Prum Rieslings. Picking this year – until the middle of December – culminated in Eiswein harvests several days earlier than the vast majority of those essayed in 2004. I did not have opportunity to taste the embryonic results of those pickings, nor did I taste Prum’s 2004s from Bernkastel and Zeltingen sites. |