I got so carried away with describing the Josephshofer vineyard that I forgot to include notes on how the Kabinett and Spateles of the 2011 vintage tasted to me. Being from the same site and vintage, the basics are going to be the same, such as the same deep straw colour (both are made from clean fruit) and the same stone fruit nose, although it seemed that the Kabinett was more obviously peachy on the nose. One expects the Spatlese to be sweeter on the palate and the Kabinett to be more obvious on the acid and both ran true to form.
What was a bit surprising was a touch of almond bitterness on the backbone of the Kabinett, a character more usually associated with botrytis. Similarly there was a luscious quality on the Spatlese's palate I'd normally associated with noble rot. Nowadays, with globally warming pushing up ripeness, it isn't simply a case of reaching the minimum Oeschle for the Pradikat, the overall balance and impression counts (as Egon Muller once told me) when making a Pradikatswein after harvesting. On the other hand though, surely there is no botrytis infection at these "low" ripeness levels!
What was a bit surprising was a touch of almond bitterness on the backbone of the Kabinett, a character more usually associated with botrytis. Similarly there was a luscious quality on the Spatlese's palate I'd normally associated with noble rot. Nowadays, with globally warming pushing up ripeness, it isn't simply a case of reaching the minimum Oeschle for the Pradikat, the overall balance and impression counts (as Egon Muller once told me) when making a Pradikatswein after harvesting. On the other hand though, surely there is no botrytis infection at these "low" ripeness levels!
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