2007 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Beerenauslese

Surprising notes of pepper cress, musk, and smoke serve as the pungent calling card for botrytis in the nose of Schonleber’s 2007 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Beerenauslese, which comes to the palate viscous and redolent of peach preserves, pear chutney, and caramel, the cressy nip of noble rot persisting up until a long, wafting, if (for the vintage) relatively soft finish. This was picked in an easterly section of the site where there is more water retention and hence earlier botrytis, although the wine’s sharp pungency and muskiness do not put me in mind of the best side of really fine, early noble rot. Perhaps I’m under-estimating the wealth of material here and it needed a bit more time in bottle to become more organized. To say that Werner and son Frank Schonleber have been on a roll lately must count as an understatement (and that applies to 2008, too). Two heads are better than one, no doubt, plus the advantages of accumulated wisdom and acreage – the family is filling-in what was once a decidedly, in places depressingly patchy landscape by buying up prime parcels from retiring vintners – are obvious. The Schonlebers went over their vineyards in early October to pull out some botrytis that had already accumulated and to thin their crop, and began seriously harvesting Riesling after the 10th. The estate’s vines were largely spared savage but capricious hail that rained down on parts of the Fruhlingsplatzchen. Werner Schonleber draws a stylistic comparison with the 2002 vintage, which he convincingly demonstrated with several bottles. Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also imported by Dee Vine Wines, San Francisco, CA tel. (877) 389- 9463