Day two: back on the right side of the road

I love Europe. It was exciting to be back on the continent. I had dozed on the short flight from London to Charles de Gaulle, negotiated the disinterested French immigration control post (no questions, just a stamp of arrival in the passport), was surprised to see both of my bags emerge from the carousel, walked past an empty customs post and then hurried to the rental car counter hoping they still had my car, booked for collection four hours earlier.

My rental booking is great value but I later realised it looks like I have no insurance cover. I hope that's not right as I thought I had just declined the major excess reduction, which is covered by my travel insurance (I have an annual policy, which saves a fair bit of money and hassle). The car is a diesel Peugeot 5008 stationwagon. It's got heaps of room, two vital power outlets, plenty of grunt, and diesel is so much more economical in Europe.

The TomTom fired up and quickly had me on the right roads. I was soon on the A4 doing 135kmh towards Reims and then Strasbourg. I was heading for Germany but I was thrilled to be back in France. I decided Germany was like family -- reliable, secure, constant -- and France was more romantic intrigue. It'll be better when I have time to improve my basic French, but for now I can get by and I love it.

I hit some roadworks and a major traffic jam near Luxembourg, and ended up doing a U-turn to get my exit, but I was on track for a 4pm arrival in Saarburg. Gavin and Gen had driven up from Beaune via Champagne so Gavin could fill his boot with more grower/bio champagnes, and arrived at the Hotel Galerie half an hour or so before me.

I had a shower, changed and we walked about 150m up the road for the first tasting visit of the March-April 2010 tour: Weingut Forstmeister-Geltz Zilliken.

With Hanno and Ruth away, the ever-delightful Dorothee gave us a guided tour of the cellars and then did a tasting of the 2009 range. German wine rules are changing again in a bid to make them simpler and more logical for the customer, and Zilliken have tackled all of the changes in this vintage.

They now have a three-tier range, start with gutsweine, or estate wine, then orstweine, or village level, and finally the Erste Lage range.

The names are also being simplified, and while all VDP members are expected to make a Grosse Gewachs now (a grand cru dry wine), they must no longer name wines kabinett trocken or spatlese trocken. No matter what must weight the grapes are picked at, they will be labelled trocken (max 9g/l r/s) or feinherb, with the terms kabinett, spatlese and auslese reserved for fruity wines.

At Zilliken we started with a trocken from each of the three quality levels: The Zilliken Riesling Trocken was first, and I was really impressed. It's very open and floral on the nose, and has impressive softness in the mouth. The Saarburger Trocken is less expressive on the nose but has a richer, more soil-driven palate. Then the "Rausch GG", which in more confusing times would have been called Saarburger Rausch Spatlese Trocken Grosse Gewachs. I'm not convinced about the pursuit of dry wines from a region that does fruity so well, but dry is where the German market is, so I understand the desire to try.

Zilliken's first is a nice effort -- it has real length and persistence. It's closed on the nose but on the palate it is dense and yet still elegant. Yellow fruit seem to be a hallmark of the vintage here. I often think of Z wines as featuring lime, vanilla essence and slate, but this vintage there is more tropical fruit -- mangoes, peach, apricot and pineapple.

Dorothee opined that Saar's point of difference is the variation in the climate, which she believes gives the wines more character and depth of flavour. 2009 had been wet in August but was perfect in September and October. One day after they finished picking it rained for a month.

Zilliken were able to make wines at every level they wanted, except eiswein as the grapes had lost their sugar and acid by the time the weather was cold enough to snap freeze them.

The process at Zilliken is to handpick grapes, press gently (or not at all for a couple of wines, taking just what juice emerged naturally from the weight in the press), put the juice in tank for one day and then transfer it to old oak fudres in the cellar for fermentation, which they believes improves the mouthfeel. When they feel the wine is balanced at whatever sweetness level they rack the wine off the yeast (twice if necessary), do a large-pore filter and then sulphur to stabilise. The sweeter the wine, the more sulphur is required to ensure there is no refermentation with all that sugar.

Back to the vintage 09: Dorothee says the wines have the elegance of 04 but the intensity of flavour of 05. Then she compares it to 1983. Every vintage has its subtle differences, and although the acids are as high as 08, they are softer, riper, rounder, comprising less malic acid (apple flavours). Minerality shines through, and the devonian slate seems to have imparted a powdery, wet-concrete taste that we'll call slate.

So, back to the glass: I'll go for the estate trocken because it's so expressive and will be the best value (people love dry wines but seem reluctant to pay much for them). The second flight is three off-dry wines: Zilliken Butterfly, Saarburger Feinherb and "Rausch Diabas", a new name in the family. Without kabinett trocken or spatlese trocken to identify a wine picked at a higher must weight, Zilliken convinced the VDP of the need for a new estate name for a top-class feinherb. Diabas is the second most prolific type of rock in their vineyards, a minerally stone.

The Butterfly is pretty, fresh, limey, talcy, just lovely. With 17g/l r/s, a screwcap and a label that was inspired by a wine writer's description of Zilliken wines as being as delicate as a butterfly, this is certain to be a big seller. I like it more than the 07 and 08, from memory.

The Saarburger Feinherb has a pale yellow colour, nice intensity, 22g/l r/s but finishes even drier than the Butterfly. It's very good.

The Diabas was picked at auslese level of ripeness -- 108 oechsle -- and fermented to about 24g/l r/s. It has delicate flavours but they are intense, clean and long, and the wine again finishes virtually dry.

Up a grade in sweetness now to kabinett and a chance to compare Zilliken's 8ha of Saarburger Rausch and 1ha of Ockfener Bockstein. Ockfen is the next village along the river.

The Zilliken Riesling is the estate kabinett and shows lots of ripe yellow fruit. It's clean, fresh, fruity and carries the 50g/l of sugar with ease.

The Saarburger Kabinett is richer on the palate and has hints of passionfruit. It's full in tatse but light on the alcohol, one of the reasons I love German riesling.

The Bockstein Kabinett comes from a vineyard that is not as steep as the Rausch but is still south-facing. It has devonian slate but it's more gravelly. The wines tend to be more open and powerful, and this one, even with just 45g/l r/s, tastes quite dense, with grapefruit, passionfruit and powdery slate on the palate. The alcohol is about 8.5 to 9% (the final analysis is not made until the wines are submitted for approval for their AP numbers).

The Rausch Kabinett leaps up to 65g/l r/s and is more floral and delicate. This site delivers more elegance and tropical fruit flavours of apricot, peach and pineapple.

The next wine grabs me too -- the Rausch Spatlese, which will be AP #6, and here comes a revelation about the grade of quality at Zilliken. They assign AP#1 to their best wine and move down the order from there. So if there are three spatleses in the vintage, the lowest number is what Zilliken consider to the best of them.

This spatlese is intense, with lots of peach, apricot, mango ... lots of acid too to keep it clean and in check on the finish. It leaves the palate thirsting for more. Dorothee likes to call it "animating, elegant acidity". This wine has about 80g/l r/s and alcohol of 7.5 to 8%.

Even the next wine, the Rausch Auslese (AP#5), doesn't taste sweet at 95g/l r/s. You can see it's a dense and ripe vintage but it's still bright and lively on the palate.

A quick palate cleanser and then we have a look at the 1993 Saarburger Rausch Auslese which I'll be importing later in the year (I've also got the last 10 cases of the '93 spatlese). The sugar has subsided (and was probably spatlese level to start with), and waxy, lanolin flavours have begun to develop, but it's still so fresh on the palate -- lemon curd, quince, a hint of licehn -- and then we learn that this bottle has been open for six days!

Next up is the Rausch Auslese #8 from 2005. This was the vintage of a lifetime for Zilliken and one they consoled themselves with when they cracked their last bottle of 1959 last year. They made six auslese that vintage -- two standard, two goldcap and two longcap! The best of them was AP#5, so this goldcap was fourth in the queue. The flavours are concentrated and in the lemon curd spectrum, but the acid is fresh and energises the palate rather than overwhelming it.

I'm exhausted and distracted so Dorothee decides to perk me up with their best two wines of the 2009 vintage. Both will be available only at the VDP auction in Trier in September, so I'll have to go to that!

The Rausch Auslese Goldcap #2 was picked at 130 oechsle, with 100% botrytis, but it is so clean and light on the palate. Energy and intensity rather than lushness. The 180g/l r/s is easily carried by acidity of 12g/l.

The big daddy is the most intense TBA Zilliken has made, with more must weight than their gauge could measure, and it goes to 230 oechsle! The raw figures are approximately 400g/l r/s, 15g/l acid and a surprisingly high 6.5% alcohol. "We've never had a wine with such concentration," Dorothee says. There is just 80 litres of it and I'll be trying to get my share. It's noticeably viscous in the glass but still not overpowering in the mouth. It's all about balance.

Looks like 2009 is a cracker, and yet different to the great string of vintages preceding it. And that's got to be a good thing.

Today's schedule: Van Volxem. Owner Roman Niewodniczanski is leading the charge for classication clarification at the VDP and will surely have plenty to say. And with his 2007 and 2008 wines grabbing people so quickly on arrival in Australia, I'll be paying close attention to the stars of his 09 lineup.