Schönlebers are arrow-straight, blazingly pure dry Rieslings.
There are few producers who can match their skill with dry Riesling. The 2012 Frühlingsplätzchen GG makes this brutally clear.
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They've focused on dry Riesling for some time. Eight or ten years ago, when many producers were still getting their footing with world-class dry Rieslings, Emrich-Schönleber was making devastatingly good wines and has continued to do so with amazing consistency.
The 2004 Frühlingsplätzchen Spätlese Trocken was a formative bottle for many of us here. It was the bottle that opened our eyes to how good dry German Riesling could be and one that we judge all others by.
There's a growing consensus that 2012 is the best German vintage of the past decade. Time will tell, but for now the wines seem to grow more impressive every week. Emrich-Schönleber's dry wines from the vintage are just gorgeous: they're beautifully balanced and clear as a crisp fall day.
At the top of the list is Schönleber's Frühlingsplätzchen GG. It's a laser-focused Riesling boasting incredible length and ridiculous detail. The detail is pitch-perfect. When the 2012 Frühlingsplätzchen GG landed, I wasted no time opening one. In short, it was lovely and easily one of the best versions of the wine I've tasted, which says a lot.
Gilman called it a "dynamite wine in the making," and that's a fair synopsis.
Emrich-Schönleber has a huge reputation in Germany. These are some of the clearest expressions of Riesling around. Each vintage, they produce some of the best dry wines in all of Germany. Somehow their wines have maintained a fairly low profile. The upside is that the wines are very fairly priced.
The 2012 Frühlingsplätzchen GG has a piercing ray of slate with a tightly round core of citrus, red fruits, smoke and much more. The amount of agility, energy and focus is unbelievable.
Emrich-Schönleber's tightly coiled style really blossoms with a handful of years of bottle age. We've created special 4-pack pricing for that reason.
This is Riesling with a razor cut and at the same time a sense of completeness, length and complexity. The purity and the overall expression is really impressive.
To order, reply to offers@crushwineco.com or call the store at (212) 980-9463.
Joe Salamone
Wine Buyer
Crush Wine & Spirits
John Gilman: "The 2012 Frühlingsplätzchen Grosses Gewächs had already been assembled and the final blend decided upon at the time of my visit, and there will be two casks of this lovely wineproduced in this vintage. This is going to be a superb bottle, but it will want six or seven years of bottle age to really reach its apogee. The superb nose jumps from the glass in a youthful blend of gooseberry, white currant, lime zest, smoke, petrol, a beautifully complex base of soil and a gentle topnote of wild yeasts. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and nascently complex, with laser-like focus, a rock solid core, racy acids and simply superb length and grip on the perfectly-balanced and very classy young finish. A dynamite wine in the making."