2000 Riesling Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Kabinett

"For me, this is a great vintage," announced Wilhelm Haag.He proceeded to convince me, with a collection that at times optimizes vintage 2000's potential for refinement, elegance, and a gravity-defying lightness from rare, healthy fruit, but on other occasions takes botrytis concentration and makes the most of it, a trick which is if anything rarer yet in this vintage. "The later you could pick this year, the better," Haag insists. He thinned his crop late, too, convinced that a green harvest would only have caused the remaining fruit to swell. "We did a rigorous selection in mid-October, removing bunches in all the vineyards�some of Spatlese ripeness�and they became Gutsriesling [Q.b.A.]," explains Haag. The quantity of wine bottled at the upper echelons is much reduced this year, after a harvest of long duration but extreme selectivity and a consequently meager crop.