GG Monzinger Halenberg - Riesling (18)

Riesling | GG Monzinger Halenberg | top grand cru | kwartsiet en blauwe leisteen | diepe mineraliteit | wijn die de komende 20 jaar alleen maar beter wordt | verfijning | precisie | mineraliteit | intens

Emrich-Schönleber

Frank en Werner Schönleber bottelen pas sinds 2001 onder hun eigen label en behoren sindsdien tot de absolute elite van de Duitse Rieslingproducenten van de afgelopen 10 jaar. Een mix van leisteen en quarzit, de warme zomerdagen en koude nachten, maken  de omstandigheden perfect om Riesling te verbouwen. Wat resulteert in wijnen met enorme precisie, diepte en een rijke mineralig expressie! Een prachtige aanwinst op het assortiment van Smaragd wijnen!

Review

The 2018 Halenberg Riesling GG is super precise, pure and fresh on the intense and stony, still reductive nose, with its notes of candied lemon and lime (that means: slightly greenish). On the palate, this is a rich and concentrated yet elegant, silky-textured, vital and powerful, persistently salty and tensioned Halenberg that is far too young to discover its full potential today. It's rich and elegant, refined and slightly tannic and needs time to develop its full potential. Tasted in July 2019. 95+/100 Stephen Reinhardt

If I tasted the whole range of wines here (which would doubtlessly be a pleasure) it would take me almost a day. There are no easygoing wines produced by Frank Schönleber, because even the so-called estate wines are expressive and complex and stylistically as well as qualitatively as important as a Brut Reserve is for a champagne house. This July, I was able to taste two contrasting but fascinating vintages, 2017 and 2018, of which I prefer many of the 2018s, possibly Emrich-Schönleber's finest vintage ever. After the April frost in 2017, which caused a lot of damage in Schönleber's very best, early-budding plots but was then compensated by the second shoots, "the weather played into our hands until autumn," says Werner Schönleber. "We didn't have any hail, the temperatures were almost always within the optimum range and the water supply was as desired too. Due to the ideal preliminary work of our team and the good state of health of the grapes, we were able to harvest the grapes, step by step and very selectively, with optimal ripeness. At the end of the harvest on 18 October, we even succeeded in selecting a Beerenauslese in the Halenberg." Schönleber describes 2017 as "a broadly classic vintage" and the wines as "a tasty link of their predecessors from 2015 and 2016: finer, cooler and more mineral than the very ripe 2015 wines, more charming and with finer fruit than the mineral 2016 wines. They also remind us a bit of the 2002 wines. If they develop just as well, we have done everything right." The Schönlebers are enormously happy with 2018: "We have never experienced a more beautiful harvest," says Werner Schönleber. The harvest went from September 20 until October 15 under perfectly sunny conditions. "We never saw grapes as beautiful as those before. They were fully ripe and absolutely healthy. Botrytis was almost nonexistent, and where it appeared, the berries were perfectly raisined." There were 120 days between flowering and the end of the harvest, which enabled the family to take a lot of time for the selection of those grapes. "For ten days, we sorted out raisins to produce the best sweet wines of our estate's history." The yields were 10% higher than normal but not as high as initially expected or as high as other regions have reported. There was less rainfall in May and June, unlike downstream, and the drought already caused a reduction of the potential yield during the flowering. Due to two thunderstorms in July, there was no significant stress of drought during the dry and hot summer, though. Schönleber is also very satisfied with the dry and fruity-styled wines. "Due to the somewhat earlier harvest, we were able to preserve the necessary freshness and elegance. Compared to the previous years, the 2018s are somewhat fruitier and rounder. Already the young wines are very charming and animating, but we still assume good ripening potential." Werner Schönleber remembers 2003 as a similar vintage, but that year was even warmer and the grapes suffered from sunburn. Also, the 2003s display more of those hot-vintage fruit aromas compared to the 2018s, which have "clear, ripe and elegant fruit that mirror the grapes we picked just perfectly." There have been two TBAs and one BA (from the Frühlingsplätzchen) selected in 2018, but I didn't taste the TBAs, one of which will be auctioned one day. I haven't tasted any greater wines in the Nahe this year than Schönleber's Grosses Gewächs Rieslings. My favorite wine, the magnum of the 2018 Auf der Ley, was auctioned in September this year in Bad Kreuznach for 270 euros (without fees and taxes), but I missed placing my bid. The Halenberg GG and the Frühlingsplätzchen GG are more than just affordable alternatives, though. These are among the finest dry Rieslings I have ever tasted from the Nahe. Schönleber's 2018 collection will be hard to beat by any German wine producer. There is almost no wine that is not close to great.