Yellow plum and parsnip make an interesting pair on the nose and bright, juicy, silken-textured palate of Spanier’s 2010 Hohen-Sulzer Riesling trocken, with prickly notes of lemon rind adding to its enervating effect and scents of almond extract and buddleia perfume adding allure. Here is a sense of elegance and juicy generosity unencumbered by bitterness or alcohol such as burdened several dry 2010 Riesling crus of spousal-estate Kuhling-Gillot. I would plan on enjoying this over the next 4-5 years, though I wouldn’t be at all shocked if it held up well longer than that. This year’s Battenfeld-Spanier collection – which, in Oliver Spanier’s unavoidable absence, I tasted with his father-in-law Roland Gillot – proved on the whole far more generous in vinous personality than that of nuptial partner-estate Kuhling-Gillot. And while the higher-alcohol and more aggressive phenolics in this estate’s Grosses Gewachs bottlings had in the past led me to sometimes prefer their lighter, more elegant and refreshing, if ostensibly lesser, “village” cuvees, in 2010 the crus were neither alcoholically-freighted nor – with one exception – overly astringent. (Incidentally, I missed tasting this year’s generic Battenfeld-Spanier Riesling.)Imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799
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