Given the fact that it was only recently released, and that it showed a bit differently but even better last September than it had the year previously, I take the liberty of offering a new tasting note on the Emrich-Schonleber 2007 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling R on which I first reported in issue 185. This smells unforgettably of kirsch, almond extract, and rowan. Satiny and glyceral-rich in texture, if offers a gorgeous meld of almond cream, honey, and vanilla studded with contrasting tart red currant and cherry, and with a saline, marine savor serving for saliva inducement in the finish. Follow it for the next 12-15 years if you can. Werner and Frank Schonleber are another Nahe dream team whose amazing performance in 2007 has been equaled in 2008. “I wouldn’t call it a vintage with the emphasis on fruit,” says Werner Schonleber, “but rather on a pronounced, saline minerality. And there was no great selection of nobly sweet wine this year, because every three or four days it would rain at least a little bit.” He offers as “a very simple explanation” of this pronounced minerality the classic one adduced by growers (whether or not scientifically supportable) that the vines better “assimilate mineral stuff” when mild weather and plenty of moisture grease – as it were – the wheels of plant metabolism. And such vintages always boast measurably high levels of dry extract; the question remains, has that – as most growers believe – anything to do with their expression of flavors for which we feel compelled to employ mineral vocabulary?Importers: Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608-9644; Dee Vine Wines, San Francisco, CA tel. (877) 389-9463