Muller-Catoir’s 2006 Haardter Herrenletten Riesling Spatlese evinces caramelized pear, persimmon, honey, and high-toned floral perfume. Palpably high in extract, this struggles to fold spice, smoke, tactile pungency, and bitterness of botrytis into a caramelized pit fruit compote, and largely succeeds. The question in my mind is whether botrytis will catch up with it. Revisit this in 3-5 years. Muller-Catoir’s vineyards were twice ravaged by hail, so a small harvest was guaranteed even before the roller-coaster of 2006 temperatures and precipitation was taken into account. Martin Franzen followed the long-standing tradition at this address of labor-intensive green harvest, selectivity, and unwillingness to compromise, in this case in the face of rapidly encroaching botrytis that – as he readily admits – rapdily turned ignoble. The upshot is a largely successful collection, much-reduced number, generally late-assembled but early (March)-bottled.Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel (516) 677-9300.

The 2004 Haardter Herrenletten Riesling Spatlese smells of liqueur-like herbal and black fruit distillates, along with a touch of gooseberry and radish-like sharpness. The palate is thickly-textured, dense and creamy with black fruits, herbs and peach presenting a formidable but not (at least yet) sharply defined phalanx of flavor. “Where Burgergarten explodes on the palate, the Herrenletten is closed-in,” agrees Franzen. We’ll have to see what time brings. Since the arrival of young Mosel-born Martin Franzen at this great estate so long associated with the wisdom and artistry of Hans-Gunter Schwarz’s 36-year tenure as cellar master, I have been struck by a degree of qualitative continuity and stylistic affinity with the ancient regime that other commentators seem not to have noticed. In a very real sense, the legacy of Schwarz – “activism in the vines, minimalism in the cellar” – has seeped indelibly into the fabric of nearly every top winery in the Pfalz. How then could it be otherwise precisely at Mandelring #25? And although Franzen and a largely new team were forced, to a considerable extent, to rediscover the keys to these vines and sites, they are the same vines and sites so carefully tended, trained and conscientiously replanted over the past decades by the then team of Catoir and Schwarz. In 2004, Franzen has unlocked from them astonishingly numerous and improbably fine vinous treasures such as one has come to associate with the name “Muller-Catoir” in the nearly four decades since a very young Heinrich Catoir inherited this estate and decided to make a statement.Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300