Graacher Domprobst Spatlese Fuder 5, Weingut Willi Schaefer 2009

Black tea smokiness, brown spice pungency, and grapefruit and orange citricity in the nose of the Schaefer 2009 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spatlese A.P. #5 migrate to a palate no less juicy or saturatingly mineral than that of the corresponding A.P. #10. Here is a delicacy, refinement of texture, and shimmering interplay of elements such as no other grape and place on earth can deliver save for Mosel Riesling. I happened to taste this wine with the meticulous German wine writer and unsurpassed trove of Mosel lore Joachim Krieger, who discoursed on the fossil-rich slate prominent in the parcel that informed this beauty. I was for my part thinking of sea creatures some millions of years younger, as subtly sweet salinity of raw scallop and iodine-like bittersweetness of shrimp shell added further allure and intrigue to what is already by any standards a "minerally," salivary gland-massaging, palate-awakening, and mind-expanding Riesling. Don't miss savoring this repeatedly over the next 25-30 years (or whatever share of them you anticipate being around)! This, the Schaefers point out, could easily have been their 2009 Grosses Gewachs, had nature not intervened to wind-down the fermentation.