A Ruwer-reminiscent amalgam of red currant, white peach, gooseberry, herbs, black tea, and lime rises from the glass of Emrich-Schonleber 2008 Monzinger Fruhlingsplatzchen Riesling trocken (corresponding to their pre-2007 Spatlese trocken). Sappy, tart fruit persistence is allied on the palate to a palpable sense of extract and a cantus firmus of salts and wet stone. Any sense of leanness is mitigated by glyceral richness and infectiously bright juiciness. The wine finishes with explosive initial impact of tiny, tart, seedy, salted berries; then seems to float off, and will leave you chewing the air. Seldom have I tasted such an overtly mineral or indeed audacious Fruhlingsplatzchen Riesling. It will be absorbing to follow over at least the next 6-8 years. 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