Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese Goldkap, Weingut Joh. Jos. Prum 2006

This offers superbly fresh scents of cassis, coconut, candy floss and herbs on the nose. The wine has the delicately oily richness of a BA on the palate but a stunningly zesty touch of citrusy acidity lifts the fresh scents of coconut and pineapple up. This all leads to a beautifully honeyed but also floral finish. This stunner of a light BA just needs a little bit more of bottle age to dissolve the touch of sweetness coming through in the aftertaste. But then, this will be one of the best Auslese GK ever tasted from this Estate. What a glorious wine in the making! 2026-2056

The 2006 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese Gold Capsule offers gardenia, orange blossom, apple jelly, and honey in the nose. Malt and peach join the floral and apple essences on the palate, which alternates silken and buttery textural expressions. Acidity is not at all obvious here, but its presence is felt in balanced sweetness and in finishing penetration and energy. Malt, butter cream and flowers linger in the empty glass. If this were sold solely as perfume it would already justify its price. But it would really be a shame to open a bottle for at least 15 years, and it could be held for at least 40. (There were two bottlings of this wine - one this year - of which I tasted the first, A.P. #17 07.) The Prums picked Wehlen and Zeltingen first, while the Graacher Himmelreich resisted botrytis to a greater degree, and by the time they came to Bernkastel (shades of the scenario at Selbach) botrytis was so advanced that they ended up vinifying their first-ever Beerenauslese from those sites. "From the standpoint of quantity, it was a catastrophe," says Manfred Prum, but he judges this likely the greatest vintage of his lifetime, yet also as a vintage that is open and accessible early. I therefore had the opportunity to taste a wider range of young nobly sweet wines here than normal, although I was not able to re-taste them after bottling. There is in fact very little to taste at this estate from 2006 other than nobly sweet wine. Miniscule amounts of "normal" Spatlese (which I did not taste) were bottled from the Himmelreich and Sonnenuhr.

A delicious auslese, revealing a fleeting range of lime, slate and spice flavors allied to a gossamer texture. Built on a light-weight frame, this layers itself seamlessly to a lime-tinged aftertaste. Drink now through 2030