Brightly combining fresh mirabelle and lemon with a hint of herbal pungency on the nose as well as on a silken-textured palate, the Heymann-Lowenstein 2009 Winninger Uhlen Riesling Laubach displays just a faint hint of sweetness that serves to accentuated its plummy fruit and help ward off any tendency toward austerity in its strikingly persistent finish dominated by lemon, licorice, peach kernel, and wet stone. Here is another instance in this collection of relative restraint; but the long if slightly lean line here - augmented by considerable complexity and textural allure - promise a wine well worth following for at least the better part of the coming decade. Like their neighbors the Knebels, Reinhard Lowenstein and Cornelia Heymann-Lowenstein captured some botrytis of rare and stunning nobility in 2009. -Things looked so bad, and we already had rot forming,- remarked Heymann-Lowenstein, -when then, suddenly and luckily, it turned dry for four weeks. For that reason, we began the harvest by picking the nobly sweet wines.- The dry wines this year all hovered just below 13% in finished alcohol. With the exception of an Uhlen Roth Lay that will - as has become the norm (described in my issue 185 report) - not be bottled until early next year (and which I did not taste), all of these 2009s were bottled in late July. (For more on Heymann-Lowenstein's vineyards as well as on their unorthodox style and labeling conventions, consult my reports in issues 163 and 167.) Imported by Ewald Moseler Selections, Portland OR tel. 888 274 4312; Chambers & Chambers, San Francisco, CA 415 642 5500; and Weygandt-Metzler Importing, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 932 9113