On Jul 23, 11:37*pm, Mark Lipton > wrote:
> Tonight's late dinner was accompanied by a bottle of:
>
> 2006 Schloss Vollrads QbA Riesling (10.5% ABV)
> nose: petrol, minerals
> palate: soft, ripe peach fruit, off-dry, light body
>
> After the remains of last night's Quenard Vin de Savoie, this wine
> appeared less dry and crisp than it might otherwise have seemed. *This
> was recommended to me by Salil as one of the drier '06 QbAs and it
> probably is, but the ripeness of the vintage does lessen the crispness
> of the wine and that's a shame. *Still, a nice summer sipper.

There have been great changes at Schloss Vollrads since 1997. This
very famous large vineyard had been owned by the same family for many
hundreds of years. The owner, Erwein Count Matuschka., died suddenly
under very sad circumstances in 1997. Apparently this huge estate had
money problems for many years after WWII, and there was some drop in
quality, especially in the more basic wines. Yet it still made some
top late harvest wines from time to time. I have 4 bottles of their
1976 TBA which is outstanding. The owner did try to get people to
drink trocken wines with food, and this perhaps was before trocken was
very popular, especially on the US market. Since 1997 the estate has
been owned by a bank The bank hired Rowald Hepp as director. The
quality of the wine is reported to have improved greatly since then.
If have not kept up with their recent wines. However, I think you
would more likely like a trocken or halb-trocken wine from them. I
suspect a QbA trocken might be a bit much for the general US market,
and it is difficult enough to make a spatlese trocken in any but the
best years. A little residual sugar can hide much sharpness,
bitterness, etc. that can show through in many of the trocken wines if
not of the best quality.