Richter's amber/orange colored 2011 Graacher Dompropst Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese, picked at 260° Oechsle and bottled with 5.5% alcohol plus 340 grams of unfermented sugar and 12.5 grams of total acidity, needs some time to open up and breathe free. Provided with clear and concentrated dried yellow-fleshed stone fruit, white meat and ginger flavors on the nose, this is a terribly sweet, rich and viscous TBA with great intensity and freshness. The acidity is perfectly integrated and gives remarkable finesse and elegance. The finish is even a bit salty and is certainly sweet and aromatic. This TBA fermented until early 2016 and has been filtered only after the harvest of the same year. I tasted the wine again from the same bottle 20 days later: Dark golden apricot color with greenish reflections, it is beautifully pure, precise and fresh on the nose where perfectly ripe and dried apricot and candied grapefruit aromas intermix with piquant and earthy/stony flavors. Round, lush and highly elegant, with great finesse and lingering vitality, this is a beautifully balanced and stimulating TBA with orange flavors in the long, pure, fresh, piquant and aromatic finish. Tasted in March and April 2017. (375-milliliter bottles)

The Richter 2007 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese displays a stunningly high-toned, penetration of ethereal, pure-botrytis secretion mingled with pit fruit liqueurs that crawls right up your nostrils. White raisin, candied lemon, and marzipan add to the complex, esterous richness on a billowing palate. Like its aromas, this wine’s finish is intense and somewhat spirit-like. I can’t say that I recognize anything of the site in this super-concentrate, and its high volatility will be controversial, but it is incontestably impressive. I imagine it will live for decades, but about what it will become, I am less confident. Dirk Richter is an historian of the Mosel as well as one of the region’s foremost growers, and he claims that on five occasions in the eleven years between and including the epochal vintages of 1911 and 1921, flowering on the Mosel took place in May ... but then not again until 2007. He started picking already in early October, but only as a means of thinning (“pre-harvesting”) his Brauneberg vineyards, and the resultant Kabinett is rather green in flavor. Harvest did not begin in earnest here until mid-October, and save for the two T.B.A.s that he painstakingly collected, Richter insists there was scarcely any botrytis. Interesting, the yields from Richter’s Wehlener Sonnenuhr vineyards – his only remaining ungrafted vines – were the highest this year that he has ever experienced, and the wines are by no means disappointing (although Auslese was not possible). The grip exhibited by his dry-tasting wines may in part come from the skin contact Richter gives most of them, in part to buffer their acids. Still, as he puts it, “with the intense minerality, strong acidity, and very low pH of Mosel Riesling, some residual sugar is needed. And here, with feinherb-as-trocken, that need is borne out quite clearly, and the wine tastes dry, and people drink it as ‘dry’.” What’s more, lower alcohol helps these “dry” Riesling dance. If feinherb (often as high here as 25 grams in residual sugar) works on Richter’s German customers, halleluiah! For anybody else, these feinherb Kabinetts should be no-brainers, especially at his prices. Richer shares my enthusiasm for the undeservedly obscure and misunderstood Pinot Blanc (a.k.a. Wiesser Burgunder), and is in process of doubling his acreage and planning to produce some Sekt from it as well Importer: Langdon-Shiverick Cleveland,?OH; tel. (216) 861-6800

The 2005 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese smells of lemon meringue, toasted hickory and walnut, and apple jelly. Intense lemony brightness, jellied fruit concentration, toasted nut cream, and honey all feature on a palate of striking creaminess and syrup-like viscosity. The citrus and toasted nut characteristics in the finish restrain the sweetness, and the overall brightness here is almost unbearable. One can only go so far in assessing anything this embryonic and hidden on account of its sheer concentration, but that is far enough to safely declare it great wine. Also recommended: 2005 Muhlheimer Sonnenlay Riesling “Zeppelin” ($16.00; 85), 2005 Riesling Classic ($18.00; 86), 2005 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Kabinett feinherb ($26.00; 85+?), 2005 Riesling ($18.00; 85), 2005 Brauneberger Juffer Riesling Kabinett ($25.00; 86+?).Importer: Langdon-Shiverick Cleveland, OH; tel. (216) 861-6800