2007 Halenberg Spatlese

From the same sort of tiny-berried, golden and healthy raw material otherwise employed for their Grosses Gewachs bottlings, the Frohlichs’ late-harvested 2007 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Spatlese exhibits some beer-like overtones it didn’t stop fermenting until June but these clear to reveal peony and lily perfume, with a plethora of melons and orchard fruits. Luscious and light, it dances across a honeyed-slicked palate, leaving only the most subtle impression of fruit acids, sufficient to refresh, even despite a rather dominant finishing sweetness, to which saline savor and hints of red berry add counterpoint. This ultra-refined, buoyant exemplar of its vintage should age superbly for 20 or more years, although I would personally give it a decade alone to work through its sheer sweetness. The star status of Tim Frohlich and the Schafer-Frohlich estate – as well as the professional qualifications and dedication of the rest of the Frohlich family and their role in achieving extraordinary results – are by now well-established facts. Things are about to take an intriguing turn in the family, as Tim’s brother-in-law Karsten Peter has just been named by its new owner as the director of the former Nahe State Domaine (a.k.a. Domane Niederhausen – Schlossbockelheim). Frohlich has gone from his first experiments with spontaneous fermentation and with culturing vineyard-specific yeasts in the 2002 vintage to a widespread reliance on these techniques, which has not inhibited complete fermentations of what are by volume – as with virtually any German estate outside of the Middle Mosel – predominantly trocken wines. And what lift and refinement Frohlich is able to achieve in his (100% tank-rendered) dry Rieslings! The acidities in the 2007s, Frohlich points out, are not analytically all that high, but they are fine, ripe (virtually all tartaric rather than malic) and hence brilliantly efficacious. There are no weak spots here this year, and as at Emrich-Schonleber, the ostensibly low-end wines are exceptionally fine. “The fruit was ripe, healthy, and clear from the bottom rung up through Grosses Gewachs,” remarks Frohlich, “and the identity of the sites could be recognized early on in the cellar. To get this sort of transparency to minerality and this elegance, you have to work with tiny, perfect berries,” he continues, “and the harmony has to be present already in the vine. That’s not something you can measure in the vineyard; you have to have an eye for it.” The two Schafer-Frohlich 2007 Pinot Noirs, incidentally, were highly promising heading into bottling, but at an awkward stage for attempting to fairly assess their eventual character. Imported by Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. 800 596 9463

Restrained on the nose but explosive on the palate, with sweet, ripe fruit, and a very lengthy finish. Again there is not a great deal of depth to the flavours – perhaps this producer makes especially slow burners? (RH)