The 2019 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Beerenauslese opens with very clear and lemony botrytis and raisin aromas intertwined with fine slate aromas. Racy-piqaunt on the the first attack, this is a sweet but delicate and even filigreed BA with a frisky character. The finish is still sweet but very long and provided with piquancy and finesse. This should be a great BA in 10 or 20 years. 6.5% alcohol. Tasted from AP 16 20 in June 2020.

Picked over several days and sorted two times (in the vineyard and again on a sorting table in the winery), the 2015 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Beerenauslese opens super clear, fresh and precise on the nose. There are lemon and smoky/stony flavors and an unreal precision. On the palate, this is a super pure, lush, precise and refreshing, highly digestible Beerenauslese of great finesse and elegance. The finish is very clear, pure, piquant and salty, revealing a beautiful grip and mineral finesse and tension. You can easily make your BA more rich and fat, but it is almost impossible to make it more fresh, piquant and digestible—but Schaefer did it with their Domprobst BA in 2015. This is immortal Riesling and most of us will never see it fading away.

The Schaefer 2011 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Beerenauslese restores the brightness, vivacity, penetrating and interplay of flavors that characterized the two magnificent Domprobst Spatlesen in the present collection but had receded as one made one’s way through the Spatlesen. Never has Willi Schaefer’s repeated mantra that green-golden ripe berries must be well-represented in a B.A. been more deliciously illustrated. Juicy and candied lemon, apple jelly and fresh apple concentrate, quince paste, white raisin, vanilla cream, and salted caramel all inform a rich yet exuberant palate performance that enervates even as it envelops. This should have half a century of adventure in store. “What there was of botrytis was fantastic,” says Christoph Schaefer, “nicely dried and beautiful, but there wasn’t much – nothing compared with 2010 (when it comes to quantities of botrytis wine). But all of the other fruit was wonderfully ripened to Kabinett or Spatlese and what we got over and beyond that came through selecting. With the good October weather we could organize our time and pick without urgency.” “We tried picking earlier but weren’t happy with the results,” adds Willi Schaefer. “We had to wait until the middle to end of October to get optimal flavors. The old vines always have the quality in them and we don’t need to worry. They have their rhythm, and whether they get a bit more or a bit less botrytis we just have to wait and see. It’s really interesting in retrospect,” he continues, “to compare 2011 and 2010. According to the analyses, you’d think ‘there’s a world of difference between these two,’ but in 2010 the acidity is well-buffered whereas in 2011 the wines taste higher in acidity than they are, so the difference is not so enormous.” Certainly there are few 2011 Mosel Rieslings, though, that better illustrate this vintage’s potential to delivery levity and refreshment along with ripeness than do those of Weingut Willi Schaefer. “More Schaefer than 2011” was how Christophe Schaefer pithily but profoundly characterized his A.P. #10, and arguably that applies to all of this vintage’s most successful Schaefer offerings. Bottling was, as usual, in April and May, but while the wines were for the most part left on their fine lees until then – both Schaefers supporting the notion that this was beneficial in 2011, albeit for reasons other than those that applied in 2010 – some of them were racked to tank over the winter as it was felt that more exchange of oxygen in cask was not what most infant 2011s needed. Importer: Terry Theise Estate Selections, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Inc., Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300

Representing a meticulous picking-out of the most perfectly desiccated berries over a wide range of parcels and the duration of this year’s harvest, his 2010 Graacher Domprobst Riesling Beerenauslese might be the exception that proves Willi Schaefer’s oft-repeated rule that one needs enough juicy gold-green berries to guarantee corresponding sap and dynamism in the resulting B.A., because here – as with the auction Auslese A.P. #4 – there is an almost too-severe sense of dried fruits and tart acids. Tingling impingement of lemon, lime and white currant in which are macerated dried apricot and peach honey are further contrasted with white raisin and honey. Sixteen grams of acidity power a rapier thrust of a finish from which the impression of botrytis ennoblement completely flees. “It never occurred to us to leave anything hanging this year for Eiswein,” quips Christoph Schaefer, “because we had our Eiswein here already.” You can say that again! Importer Terry Theise noted that this wine displayed unusual serenity very early on. Perhaps the stillness was foreboding. And perhaps with time – heaven knows, one could safely plan on a half century life span from this elixir – a higher harmony will be established in this audacious concentrate. I have to wonder about it’s future at the same time that I recognize it as a sort of natural wonder. “You had to keep delaying harvest,” says Christoph Schaefer, “but when it did come time, a significant share of the crop needed to be picked pretty quickly,” due to pressure from botrytis. Of course, when two experienced grower-owners have only ten – albeit extremely morsellated – acres to tend, 2010 challenges are a bit more manageable. “It was really important this year,” Schaefer junior continues, “to let the small amount of fruit that was still green hang, because such bunches were retarded in ripeness; high in malic acid; and would have been very noticeable in a blend.” “Even if you have only 10 or 20% of those sour grapes in the picking, you’ll never get that sour note out of the wine” adds Willi Schaefer, who is a champion in other contexts of including fresh green-gold grapes in one’s material, but suspects that failure to recognize the aforementioned danger was the cause of many a disappointing 2010. Notwithstanding – but also not contradicting – that opinion, as I noted in my introduction to this vintage, many Mosel growers observed not only higher concentration of total acidity in precisely their botrytized fruit but also the locking-in of more malic, and as my tasting notes demonstrate, the acids in some of the Schaefers’ most botrytized batches bordered on the obstreperous. “Only after fermentation – in which a significant (but variable) amount of acidity is lost anyway – can you really tell the structure of your wine,” insists Christoph Schaefer, “so what de-acidifying we did – largely in Q.b.A. and Kabinett – was as a correction to wine.” Willi Schaefer is keen to remind us that what tastes balanced is partly an imponderable function of terroir. “You’ll see that ten grams of finished acidity tastes well-integrated and -buffered in wine from one parcel, while a wine with approximately the same gross analysis from another parcel tastes sour. When I see bunches looking and tasting a certain way, and I know where they’re growing, then the analysis doesn’t interest me; I know the wine is going to turn out right.” You can taste that sort of confidence in a 2010 performance from Schaefers of unusual qualitative consistency, even if there will be differences of opinion as to the potential greatness of certain wines that are extreme in ways which would only in this vintage fail to elicit a gasp. “You can’t really say that earlier or later pickings were more successful this year,” adds Schaefer senior, but as at so many top Middle Mosel addresses this year, Spatlese and Auslese predominate, an outcome of which nobody even dreamt at the end of 2010’s rainy September. Only the heaviest le