Keith Levenberg
Keith Levenberg
Falkenstein 2018 Niedermenniger Herrenberg Riesling Spatlese Feinherb A.P. Nr. 4
Old-vine parcel, all or mostly ungrafted. Such vivid grapefruit flavors that you get everything short of a squirt in the eye and if you don't taste this and think of grapefruit, you've probably never had a grapefruit. It has that texture of fine-meshed chain mail often called 'filigreed' in riesling lingo and turns chalky on the back end. What's most distinctive about it may be the hardest thing to express - there's a real sense of scale; when you first taste it you expect all that bright citrus to come across sharp and acute, but instead it practically fills an IMAX screen on the palate. Feinherb puts it in the perfect zone - you don't give any thought at all to the sugar/acid balance unless you really sit down and ruminate on it. (Or look it up, where it turns out to be 27-28 g/l.)
Falkenstein Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Spatlese A.P. Nr. 14
Also old vines, MFW says it's from "the prime Grosses Schock sector of the vineyard," apparently just below the part used for auslese. This one is more true spatlese in sweetness, at least by the standards of Falkenstein - by the standards of some other producers it might taste feinherb. (It's 62 g/l.) The fruit has a bit of lemon and a lot of lime, but zesty lime, both juice and pith. In addition to being more palpably sweet it's also more slick and glossy, but it does have an (albeit lighter) sense of that powdered chalk on the back.
Old-vine parcel, all or mostly ungrafted. Such vivid grapefruit flavors that you get everything short of a squirt in the eye and if you don't taste this and think of grapefruit, you've probably never had a grapefruit. It has that texture of fine-meshed chain mail often called 'filigreed' in riesling lingo and turns chalky on the back end. What's most distinctive about it may be the hardest thing to express - there's a real sense of scale; when you first taste it you expect all that bright citrus to come across sharp and acute, but instead it practically fills an IMAX screen on the palate. Feinherb puts it in the perfect zone - you don't give any thought at all to the sugar/acid balance unless you really sit down and ruminate on it. (Or look it up, where it turns out to be 27-28 g/l.)
Falkenstein Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Spatlese A.P. Nr. 14
Also old vines, MFW says it's from "the prime Grosses Schock sector of the vineyard," apparently just below the part used for auslese. This one is more true spatlese in sweetness, at least by the standards of Falkenstein - by the standards of some other producers it might taste feinherb. (It's 62 g/l.) The fruit has a bit of lemon and a lot of lime, but zesty lime, both juice and pith. In addition to being more palpably sweet it's also more slick and glossy, but it does have an (albeit lighter) sense of that powdered chalk on the back.
