2007 Monzinger Fruhlingsplatzchen Grosses Gewachs

The Schonleber 2007 Monzinger Fruhlingsplatzchen Riesling Grosses Gewachs offers a sweeter red berry and peach tone and more opulent texture than its Halenberg counterpart, with salted, toasted almond notes adding interest to its long finish, and an ample sense of brightness and refreshment too often absent from this genre. Here, too, there is a fascinating savor poised between mineral and animal, and the wine should be worth following for a decade or more in bottle. To say that Werner and son Frank Schonleber have been on a roll lately must count as an understatement (and that applies to 2008, too). Two heads are better than one, no doubt, plus the advantages of accumulated wisdom and acreage – the family is filling-in what was once a decidedly, in places depressingly patchy landscape by buying up prime parcels from retiring vintners – are obvious. The Schonlebers went over their vineyards in early October to pull out some botrytis that had already accumulated and to thin their crop, and began seriously harvesting Riesling after the 10th. The estate’s vines were largely spared savage but capricious hail that rained down on parts of the Fruhlingsplatzchen. Werner Schonleber draws a stylistic comparison with the 2002 vintage, which he convincingly demonstrated with several bottles. Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also imported by Dee Vine Wines, San Francisco, CA tel. (877) 389- 9463

Rich, opulent and very creamy, almost lanolin texture; a very elegant and complex wine with great promise. (MS)