Tim Frohlich: Top Gun meets German winemaking.

The style at S-F is decidedly angular and aggressive. Though never rough, the wines have so much thrust it's almost shocking. Tim's Rieslings are chiseled, with concentrated fruits smashed on top of shattered shards of slate. Rereading my notes from this tasting is entertaining; among other things, I refer to the wines as "Riesling assassins." I've referred to Donnhoff's 2006s as "fighter-jet Rieslings" - and while I think the phrase is apt for Donnhoff, the truth is I first thought of this analogy while tasting Tim's 2006s at the estate. The wines are so transparent, so dense with wet stones and rocks through the mid-palate that one has the sense when drinking them young that if you swallowed the wrong way, this exposed minerality might slice the inside of your throat.

The dry wines in general show more of these sheer and cut angles, though you'll find this theme in the sweet wines as well. Tim also uses native yeasts, so the wines, in their youth, do show a bit of animal funk - "spontan" as the Germans say. This blows off when the bottles are open and allowed to breath; it also integrates in the bottle with age.

A photo taken from the porch at Schafer-Frohlich - note the Felseneck vineyard peaking out between the houses.

2006, as you've probably heard, was not the easiest vintage. While I think some of the wines will probably prove to be greater than the 2005s, it wasn't the same "walk in the park" sort of year. Botrytis, and its evil brother rot, was a big problem in certain parts of Germany. Tim, however, looked at me quizzically when I asked him if they had had any problem with rot. He said simply, "no." While most estates I visited went through pains to explain how hard it was, how they did this or that to save the vintage and had to reduce their productions incredibly, Tim made no fuss about it. Frankly, I felt sort of stupid for asking. Indeed, there were substantial rains in the fall but Tim told me he simply made the decision to wait it out and harvest later. An extremely gutsy move, but it paid off. The grapes got another two weeks of hang-time and the weather was good for the harvest. They did hire extra help for the harvest (30 people as opposed to the usual 20) and they were extremely selective, but they didn't lose much wine.

Uniquely among German estates in 2006, S-F produced about as much wine in 2006 as they did in 2005.

Tim attributes much of the success to vineyard management. His father Hans is the vineyard manager and at the tasting he sat quietly in the corner, whispering with Rudi. He appears to have his son's coolness - he's reserved and withdrawn though friendly. Rudi believes much of this estate's success lies in its absolutely obsessive vineyard work. Hans apparently works more than he talks. As we drove away, I unloaded on Rudi, in sheer awe of the wines. Rudi, with a good amount of driving ahead of him didn't have the energy to get wrapped up in my manic enthusiasm. Instead, he simply said, "I'll tell you what Stephen, every time I call, Tim and his dad are in the vineyard - every single time."

The Felseneck vineyard rises up above the beautiful, sleepy town of Bockenau.

Picking my favorite wines from this tasting is hard, because they were all pretty extraordinary. All the Grosses Gewachs I tried were outstanding: Felseneck, Felsenberg and Kupfergrube. Though they were all showing quite closed, the raw material is awe-inspiring and I just cannot imagine the wines won't develop into absolutely superb dry Rieslings.

For 2006, the raw material in Bockenauer Felseneck and Monziger Halenberg was near perfect; the vineyards of Schlossbockelheim (Felsenberg and Kupfergrube) saw a bit more fog and so botrytis was more prevalent there. No matter, botrytis, as we all know, can be a good thing. In this case it was.

Still, special mention should be made of the wines Tim crafts from the Felseneck vineyard. He considers this his best site and from it he bottles a number of wines that are all cut and lean, yet somehow packed with complex, layered fruit.

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