Weingut Emrich-Schonleber Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Auslese, Nahe, Germany

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The Emrich-Schonleber 2008 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Auslese displays obvious smokiness and honey of botrytis, along with dried fruits and a suggestion of browned, salted butter. Here is one of those 2008s that sooths as it seduces (or vice-versa), and the combination of nut cream, honey, pear butter, and quince paste in this wine’s long finish is adorable. There is just enough sense of fresh fruit vivacity to complement the delicate, almost weightless palate impression. One could make a similar point here as with this year’s Fruhlingsplatzchen Spatlese: it’s polished, pure Auslese with irresistible drinkability today, yet precisely its uncanny balance and levity should directly and positively affect is ability to age for 25 or more 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