Germany · Nahe · Monzingen · White · Still · wine-wine
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| Price / case | Vintage | Packing | Qty | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 201.00 GBP | 2022 | 6 x 75cl | 10 | uk / United Kingdom |
| 200.00 GBP | 2023 | 6 x 75cl | 7 | uk / United Kingdom |
| 200.00 GBP | 2023 | 6 x 75cl | 7 | uk / United Kingdom |
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| Vintage | Packing | Offers | Bids | Market price | WA rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2017 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2022 | 6 x 75cl | 1 | 0 | ||
| 2023 | 6 x 75cl | 2 | 0 |
Rating: 93 –93
The 2014 Riesling Monzinger Frühlingsplätzchen Spätlese offers a lovely, pure and slate-like/flinty bouquet intermixed with ripe and well concentrated fruit aromas. Very piquant and salty on the palate, this is a pure and mineral Spätlese with lots of salt and vibrating red stones. Vibratingly cool and fresh--a dancer--a beautiful wine.
Rating: 92 –92
The 2015 Riesling Monzinger Frühlingsplätzchen Spätlese is intense, ripe and flinty on the nose, as well as lovely, precise and stimulating. It is really hard to spit out this Riesling that is another picture book Spätlese with a juicy texture, remarkablely refined fruit and acidity. The 2015 is so salty, light and balanced, but also so lush and sensual that you better calculate one bottle for two and keep a second in reserve.
Rating: 95 –95
The Schonleber 2008 Monzinger Fruhlingsplatzchen Riesling Spatlese comes largely from some upper-sections of that site, due at least in part to a case of man-influenced terroir: A lot more fine particulate matter was deposited here in connection with roadwork, which led to more moisture retention and higher botrytis incidence (normally favoring lower-lying sections), thus rendering the grapes most suitable for residually sweet wine. In fact, “suitable” hardly does justice to what we have here, and which also incorporates 200 evidently amazingly efficacious liters from the Rutsch (“slide” – which says it all!) vineyard that the Schonlebers decided represented too little wine to bottle separately. Cherry, almond extract, heliotrope, rowan, and honeysuckle rise alluringly and trance-inducingly from the glass; a creamy mixture of pear nectar, honey, vanilla, and cherry preserves fondles the palate; yet this displays the epitome of Riesling refreshment and transparence in a finish of spectacular perspicuity, with saline, stony and crystalline mineral suggestions shimmering through folds of fruit (including bright fresh lime) and wafting floral perfume. This impeccably-balanced Spatlese should age magnificently for two or more decades, and I can only second Schonleber’s own comments in that regard: This sort of balance – namely not only delicate but delicate in its sense of sweetness – makes for more pleasure in drinking it early, but also for better aging. And it hardly needs stating that this is a sensational value which – were it a dry wine – would be a significantly more expensive Grosses Gewachs. 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
Rating: 94 –94
The Schonleber 2009 Monzinger Fruhlingsplatzchen Riesling Spatlese fascinatingly mingles luscious citrus, salted caramel, nut paste, white peach, Persian melon, subtly tart red raspberry, and diverse mineral nuances. Musk, goose fat, and vaguely pheromonic notes add animal intrigue. Even at 70 grams of residual sugar, the sweetness is supportive rather than obtrusive, and one consequence is a mere 9% alcohol and concomitant sense of levity. Creamy in texture, yet packed with pure, juicy refreshment, this finishes with alluring length and a compulsive urge to take the next sip and the next. Frank Schonleber opines that the tension and nuances in this wine were slow to emerge in its elevage and also will be from the bottle. Certainly we can look forward to at least two decades of kaleidoscopically interactive, thought-provoking delight. Werner and Frank Schonleber harvested through nearly the entire month of October, and noted that levels of sugar and total acidity remained fairly constant, while flavors kept improving and malic acid diminishing in favor of tartaric. Speaking of improving, it’s hard for these two vintners to much-improve their by now phenomenal batting average, but no Riesling lover is likely to suffer the least disappointment by buying bottles of Emrich-Schonleber 2009s. Especially at its dry end, this is a collection to describe which seems to call for an extended mineral vocabulary that doesn’t even exist in English or German! And in nobly sweet echelons, the small amount of Riesling the Schonlebers rendered is strikingly successful and informed by an ample if mysterious measure of sheer juiciness. About the absence of Eiswein, Frank Schonleber notes: “We had the feeling that ripeness had simply advanced too far in 2009 to justify leaving any grapes hanging in anticipation of frost.” Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also imported by Dee Vine Wines, San Francisco, CA tel. (877) 389- 9463
Rating: 93 –93
The buoyant and refreshing, chiffon-like impression engendered by the corresponding Kabinett persists in Emrich-Schonleber’s 2010 Monzinger Fruhlingsplatzchen Riesling Spatlese, which mingles white peach, red raspberry, lime, and honeydew melon garlanded with honeysuckle and lily-of-the-valley. Ravishingly sustained, with saliva-inducing salinity, faint alkalinity, and wet stone underpinnings, this superbly balanced performance should excite for the next couple of decades if not longer. The fruit for this Spatlese was picked well ahead of that for this year’s Grosse Gewachse, and was reported to have incorporated “at most 10% botrytis.” At 9.5% alcohol, incidentally, this wine’s residual sugar is quite restrained. ”Look, the acid levels were almost this high in 1994 – though with much higher yields,” relates Werner Schonleber of 2010, “and yet 1994 was probably my most individual year of the 1990s,” a judgment in which, incidentally, I concur. Musts of extremely high acidity (a couple had pHs under 3.0) were de-acidified – “very cautiously,” notes Frank Schonleber, “leaving plenty of leeway in case one or the other went into malo,” which several Riesling lots spontaneously followed the lead of the estate’s Pinots in doing. Despite high levels of potassium (not to mention, of course, tartaric acid) and a cold winter, there was relatively little precipitation of tartrates at this address. Early picking of the Schonlebers’ Auf der Lay parcel, already with significant botrytis, militated against there being an “A.de.L” bottling this year such as had been essayed – exclusively in magnum – in the two preceding vintages. This is really a year, chez Schonlebers, for Fruhlingsplatzchen as a site to shine, though neither they nor I can offer a hypothesis. Regarding the gap or jump in this year’s line-up from “regular” (though in fact, fantastic) Auslesen to Eiswein, Werner Schonleber commented that given the quality and the paucity of fruit available, “Attempts to segregate a gold capsule Auslese were going to make for (“regular”)Auslese in which something was missing. And we scarcely thought ourselves capable of a Beerenauslese this vintage; the attempt wouldn’t have gone well. We had lovely botrytis, but by no means such concentrated berries.” Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also imported by Dee Vine Wines, San Francisco, CA tel. (877) 389- 9463
Rating: 91 –91
The Emrich-Schonleber 2011 Monzinger Fruhlingsplatzchen Riesling Spatlese delivers scents and lusciously juicy palate evocations of quince, mango, musk melon, and mirabelle, deriving welcome counterpoint from subtly-tart and piquant suggestions of fruit skin, toasted nuts and fruit pit. There is an even more obvious sense of levity here than in the corresponding (generically-labeled) Kabinett, despite the wine’s sense of expansiveness, subtle creaminess and textural plushness. (Dissolved CO2 plays one role in engendering liveliness.) This Riesling of impeccably balanced sweetness finishes with both soothing and subtly stimulating persistence. As Frank Schonleber points out, it is much easier to render a Mosel-style, unabashedly sweet Spatlese in a year like 2010 than in 2011, when in fact – in his words – “it was damned hard.” This one should remain lovely for at least the better part of a decade. Veteran Werner Schonleber stresses the role played in 2011’s high quality by tiny drought-impacted berries as well as, naturally, the growing season’s early start; generally cool nighttime temperatures; and five weeks of ideal weather from mid-September on. That small berry size obviated any green harvest, but there was a substantial “pre-harvest” of Riesling – destined largely for generic bottlings – from September 26, with the two Pinots being picked immediately thereafter. The main harvest for Riesling commenced October 3, lasting for two weeks. Like many estates, botrytis arrived here directly on the heels of the heavy rain that fell around September 10-12, but dried to ideal purity and fineness to serve for ennobling concentration without overtly fungal character or less desirable concurrent infections. Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also imported by Dee Vine Wines, San Francisco, CA tel. (877) 389- 9463
Rating: 94 –94
The Schonleber 2007 Monzinger Fruhlingsplatzchen Riesling Spatlese smells of peaches, red raspberry, lemon, diverse flowers, and a hint of petrol. Oily and rich yet bright and refreshing on the palate, its persistent salinity adds to a sense of invigoration, and its residual sugar underscores the fruit character and creaminess of texture yet is scarcely noticeable in the wafting finish, where luscious honey, peach, and pit fruit distillates vie for attention. This luscious, superbly elegant, impeccably-balanced wine should be worth following for 15 or more years. 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