Germany · Nahe · Monzingen · White · Sweet · wine-wine · 1138946
Lowest offer: 25.66666666666666666666666667 GBP (Buy)
Offers: 5 · Bids: 0
| Price / case | Vintage | Packing | Qty | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 166.00 GBP | 2016 | 6 x 75cl | 7 | uk / United Kingdom |
| 166.00 GBP | 2017 | 6 x 75cl | 6 | uk / United Kingdom |
| 154.00 GBP | 2018 | 6 x 75cl | 8 | uk / United Kingdom |
| 166.00 GBP | 2018 | 6 x 75cl | 10 | uk / United Kingdom |
| 191.00 GBP | 2021 | 6 x 75cl | 10 | uk / United Kingdom |
No active bids.
| Vintage | Packing | Offers | Bids | Market price | WA rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2009 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2011 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2012 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 2383.56 | |
| 2012 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 1191.78 | |
| 2013 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2016 | 6 x 75cl | 1 | 0 | ||
| 2017 | 6 x 75cl | 1 | 0 | ||
| 2018 | 6 x 75cl | 2 | 0 | ||
| 2021 | 6 x 75cl | 1 | 0 | ||
| 2024 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 |
Rating: 93 –93
The 2015 Riesling Monzinger Halenberg Spätlese is clear, ripe and intense on the nose, intermixing its ripe Riesling, pineapple and lemon flavors with the coolish smokiness of the Halenberg terroir. This is a gorgeous, mouth-filling, round, complex and densely woven Riesling with great mineral grip and lingering salinity. A great Halenberg with aging potential that should be enormous.
Rating: 92 –92
The 2014 Riesling Monzinger Halenberg Spätlese shows a clear, very stony/flinty-flavored bouquet of fully ripe fruit (pineapples). It's also quite exotic on the juicy and sweet palate, which is still dominated by some untamed flavors. This is a rather sensual and enormously juicy Riesling with a mineral backbone that should not be drunk before 2025. The residual sugar level of 66 grams is almost like the one of the Frühlingsplätzchen, but the acidity of 7.8 grams per liter is lower.
Rating: 93 –93
The 2015 Riesling Monzinger Halenberg Spätlese is clear, ripe and intense on the nose, intermixing its ripe Riesling, pineapple and lemon flavors with the coolish smokiness of the Halenberg terroir. This is a gorgeous, mouth-filling, round, complex and densely woven Riesling with great mineral grip and lingering salinity. A great Halenberg with aging potential that should be enormous.
Rating: 92 –92
Smoky, struck-flint, and salt spray notes rise from the glass of Schonleber 2008 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Spatlese, accompanied by red berries, citrus, and white peach. This is dense and compact, with a sense of extract and minerality you imagine having to strain through your teeth. There is an underlying sense of richness as well as fine ripe acidity, and the wine could serve as a model for balanced Riesling residual sweetness. Yet, impressive though it is, it is totally different in personality from the corresponding Fruhlingsplatzchen, and cannot compete for excitement. I would be inclined to hold this for a few years before revisiting, and am confident it will be an outstanding wine 20 or more years from now. 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: 91 –91
The Emrich-Schonleber 2009 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Spatlese displays a soothing as well as refreshing and metaphorically remarkably cooling amalgam of honeydew melon, lime, grapefruit, wintergreen, and mint. There is a faintly Sauvignon-like aura here, but at the same time this shows its sweetness much more obviously than does the corresponding Fruhlingsplatzchen that had been picked a week earlier (and in fact at marginally higher acidity). As with the other best Schonleber wines of its vintage – dry or sweet – there is a marvelous sense of transparency, in this case to saline, stony, and crystalline mineral impingement that engenders invigoration and helps offset the sense of sweetness and subtle caramelization in the wine’s long finish. 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
Emrich-Schonleber’s 2010 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Spatlese boasts succulently ripe white peach and kiwi, whose scents are mingled with smoked meat pungency and intimations of the salt and wet stone that then serve for mouthwatering complexity on a silken palate and in a scintillatingly sustained finish. Like its Fruhlingsplatzchen counterpart, two decades worth of attention will not have been wasted on this; indeed, I would not be surprised to find an even more ravishingly complex wine here ten years from now. ”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: 92 –92
With Schonlebers’ 2011 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Spatlese one witnesses an easily verifiable instance of terroir influence, insofar as the wine is analytically considerably lower in acidity (at just 6.5 grams per liter) than the corresponding Fruhlingsplatzchen, yet displays a tad more lively – indeed, downright infectious – juiciness and refreshment. It also displays a more obvious cantus firmus of wet stone, over which flows a steady, sensually satisfying and sustained stream of peach, mirabelle and Persian melon laced with quinine and almond extract. I would plan on enjoying this beauty over the next 10-12 years, though it would not be the first Spatlese from this estate to make a fool out of me by lasting longer than I predicted. Like its Fruhlingsplatzchen counterpart, incidentally, this reflects fruit at most 10% of which, Schonlebers say, was botrytis-affected. 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: 91 –91
The Schonleber 2006 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Spatlese features honey-glazed nectarine and red berries in a seductively creamy, subtly caramelized and bitter-sweet melange. Rich nut oil and saline and wet stone mineral notes emerge in the long, refined finish. There is no significant sacrifice of clarity or purity to the wine’s evident botrytis. This can be revisited with pleasure for the next 15 years at least. “The Nahe had the capability to render really good dry wines this year,” asserts Werner Schonleber. “Elsewhere, the botrytis was problematic, or the ripening took place too quickly. But we caught the whole spectrum here.” He proceeded to prove this memorably in the glass, with the finest collection I have ever tasted at this address (as well as – improbably – one in which Fruhlingsplatzchen outperformed Halenberg). 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: 92 –92
Pear and nut oils figure prominently in the nose of Schonleber’s 2007 Monzinger Halenberg Riesling Spatlese, which adds lime, nectarine, melon, and red fruits on the palate. Satisfying succulence and refreshment as well as subtle mineral suggestions inform a long finish, though not one comparable in elegance, refinement, or complexity to that of this year’s corresponding Fruhlingsplatzchen. This should hold well for at least 12-15 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