From shy-bearing, virus afflicted old vines acquired in 2003 in an unusually cobbled soil in the Auf der Lay section of Halenberg, the Schonlebers’ dry 2008 Riesling AUF der Lay (whose initials also spell Adel noble) was auctioned-off exclusively in magnum and larger formats. This is strikingly pronounced in salinity and in its savor of fresh scallops and shellfish reduction and had me salivating from the first whiff. Bright, smoke-tinged grapefruit, lime, and red currant are accented with smoky black tea and cherry pit. The wine offers a seamless sense of textural richness and bonding of fruit and mineral elements while at the same time radiating energy and citric brightness. The overall impression is slightly less winsome than that of the Halenberg Grosses Gewachs but utterly formidable. This should be worth following for 10-12 years if not longer especially since you’ll have magnums, not 750s!. 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