Mint and orange blossom, and lilac scent the 2006 Ockfener Bockstein Riesling Spatlese, which combines lovely orchard fruit and inner-mouth floral perfume with a distinct wet stone slate character. The overall effect is delightfully delicate and refreshing, with scarcely greater impression of sweetness than in the corresponding Kabinett, and an interplay of flavors and elegance that supports Weis’s contention that the best portions of Bockstein actually are very under-rated today. (They were highly-prized in the 19th and early 20th century.) Still, I don’t find this rendition with high residual sweetness to be on the same level with the “feinherb” variation. Enjoy this anytime over the next 20 years. Nik Weis has proven himself a master not only at judging balance in Riesling, but at successfully marketing well-balanced but not legally trocken wine to his countrymen. (Chapeau!) That was a good thing this vintage, he says, because he thinks many of the high must-weight wines he harvested would not have balanced either at significantly higher alcohol or residual sugar. I agree, having found his wines in the lower realms of residual sugar especially successful. The vintage demanded compromises in harvest strategy if not in ultimate quality. “There were wonderful shriveled berries in the Laurentius Lay,” for example, relates Weis, “and had I had another fifteen pickers or another few days, we could have harvested a Trockenbeerenauslese” as happened in 2005, when one of the greatest wines of the vintage resulted. “But I had Kabinett grapes in Piesport at that point that would no longer have been Kabinett if I had waited while the whole crew went picky gepidelt hatten. We had to deal in full parcels this year, not select.” The 2006 wines here were taken from their lees and bottled sooner than in most years.Importer: H. B. Wine Merchants, New York, NY; tel. (917) 402-0456