Very ripe peach is garlanded with musky narcissus and laced with bright lemon juice as well as piquant peach kernel and lemon oil in the Schonborn 2011 Hochheimer Domdechaney Riesling Erstes Gewachs (*), which, despite a welcome sense of mid-palate sap to accompany its fullness, unfortunately can’t entirely hide its 14% alcohol in a sustained finish that accentuates bitter components and sets the gums to lightly sizzling. For all that, there is an admirable sense of clarity along with welcome interaction of stony and fruity elements. A freshly opened bottle betrayed its alcohol less than one that had been opened for two days. I would plan to drink this by 2016. (It is officially alleged that this wine was subjected to illegal must concentration, though why Barth would want to accentuate an already problematic tendency toward too much potential alcohol is hard for me to imagine.)
In recent reports, I have ascribed the significant positive developments at Schloss Schonborn to Peter Barth, who was named “winery director of the year 2009” by the Gault Millau, wine guide within Germany. However, Baarth was dismissed by Count Paul Schonborn in autumn of 2012 after the State of Hessen brought charges against him for violations of German Wine Law based on analyses that allegedly demonstrated he had illegally concentrated musts; blended wines in ways incompatible with their labeled geographical attributions; and added distilled spirit to T.B.A.s (presumably to push them past the 5% alcohol requisite for wine). The charges involved 20 wines (Seven of them Pinots) and around 20,000 bottles, mostly from vintage 2011, all of which the winery – acting decisively, if ultimately with little choice – destroyed or has sought to buy back from trade or private owners so that they can be destroyed. As of early 2014, the case has yet to come to trial. Steffen Roll, who replaced Barth soon after the latter’s dismissal, will be responsible for a newly-assembled viticulture team as well as for wine-making, and there is little doubt among those who have observed their vineyards first hand that the level of care these received under outside management – along with their sheer vastness – was a weak point of the Schonborn estate, whether or not consequences of that weakness played any role in a temptation to transgress wine law in the cellar (which I tend to doubt). As it happens, I got an especially distressing glimpse of the estate’s rot-endangered flagship Hattenheimer Pfaffenberg and other nearby vineyards during the warm, rainy third week of September, 2011, but Barth had not yet ordered any significant picking and expressed confidence that if the rain soon stopped, he would still be able to select both healthy and botrytized bunches capable of excellence, which is exactly what happened. “Many people failed to learn the relevant lessons from 2003,” he insisted, and for that reason ended up with overly-alcoholic and acid-deficient 2011s. Among other procedures, musts were immediately pressed; rapidly and radically chilled; then rigorously settled. This is one of several Rhine estates whose lighter dry 2011s I found more expressive and better-balanced than their Grosse Gewachse. My tasting notes on this occasion reflect no experiences subsequent to Barth’s indictment for wine fraud, but I have placed a parenthetic asterisk (*) after the names of any wines I reviewed that were evidenced in those charges, and added a parenthetic note on the infraction in question. As usual given the huge extent of this estate – and even allowing for its many distinguished vineyards whose fruit informs only generic bottlings – I did not taste more than two-thirds of its vintage offerings.
Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. (800) 596 9463. Until recently, though, 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,
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