Picked out from the material that informed the corresponding B.A., the Schonborn 2009 Erbacher Marcobrunn Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese is amber, viscous, and pungently smoky and spicy. Salted caramel, peach preserves, vanilla cream, and crystallized ginger inform a buttery palate rather incongruously laced with fresh lemon and adhering with formidable tenacity. Here is another case in the present collection where one can only wait for 25-30 years to see whether harmony and further complexity emerge. I dont expect the wine to decline until well past then. There are only around six dozen half bottles and I often wonder where such rarities actually end up, so I asked director Peter Barth about this instance. Six half bottles, he said, were sold off the top, “because at 600 Euros each I wasnt going to say no to that customer! Well trade some with our (wine growing) colleagues. The rest will go into our Schatzkammer for the future.”
The latest collection from Peter Barth and his team further demonstrates the high standards that now prevail at this venerable estate. “The window for optimal harvest seems to keep narrowing,” Barth notes, and the relatively high finished alcohol levels on this years dry Schonborn Rieslings certainly testifies to that fact, leaving the 2008s at this address with a distinct edge over their 2009 counterparts. Despite the ravages of hail in Hattenheim and Erbach – including the loss of nearly one-third of the estates anticipated crop of Marcobrunn – the number of different bottlings from that site and from the monopole Pfaffenberg is still considerable.
Various importers, including Dee Vine Wines San Francisco, CA; tel. (877) 389- 9463, Slocum & Sons, North Haven, CT; tel. 203-239-8000, Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700, Winesellers Ltd. Niles, IL; tel. (847) 647-1100
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