WineLovers Discussion Group

I love riesling, but am not always the best judge-critic of them. To me, they nearly all taste good if they have enough concentration and purity of fruit and decent acidity. But once in while a memorable bottle comes around. This, to me, was one of those types of bottles.

Peter Jakob Kühn, Oestrich Lenchen, Riesling Spätlese, 2004
A medium-deep gold already. A strange bottle, bottled with a stainless steel bottle cap (yes, the kind you need a bottle opened for). Also, the first riesling wine I have ever had to decant, since there were some greyish-white globules on the bottom that looked like bacteria through a microscope that I didn't want to be drinking. So I decant...
Pear and mild citrus on the nose, it really becomes more active in the mouth: dried orange peel, tropical fruited (but not overripe!) starfruit, passionfruit, papaya with a dried note on the vauguely smoky finish. This is beautiful. 11% alcohol gives this more of a body with glycerin feel than is normal for a spatlese. After a time, some verbena and lavender come through. A true German vino da meditazione, to mix regions here. A-/A

Mark,

Is it possible the granules on the bottom were tartrate crystals? Sometimes they cling to form a small irregular "mountain" and take on a grayish hue.

Thomas wrote:Mark,

Is it possible the granules on the bottom were tartrate crystals? Sometimes they cling to form a small irregular "mountain" and take on a grayish hue.

They were definately NOT tartrates. I know what those look like and these were not crystalline at all. They were fuzzy and nebulous, like a dustbunny or cottonwood fluff, but smaller. Never seen anything like it before. It was almost like fungus in a bottle.

Mark S wrote:

Thomas wrote:Mark,

Is it possible the granules on the bottom were tartrate crystals? Sometimes they cling to form a small irregular "mountain" and take on a grayish hue.

They were definately NOT tartrates. I know what those look like and these were not crystalline at all. They were fuzzy and nebulous, like a dustbunny or cottonwood fluff, but smaller. Never seen anything like it before. It was almost like fungus in a bottle.

ew...