Smelling of pink grapefruit, pralines, and banana, von Schonborn's 2008 Hattenheimer Pfaffenberg Riesling Beerenauslese comes to the palate absolutely sticky with sweetness, despite its high acidity, and a confectionary sense of honey-drenched pralines emerges in the finish. This almost pasty concentrate is amazingly viscous and creamy, but its lightness of touch is not accompanied by the sense of levity that so memorably informed the estate's rare nobly sweet bottlings from Marcobrunn. There is no question it's phenomenally persistent, but its sheer sense of sweetness is a bit overpowering. Anyone who hasn't a really sweet tooth should have at least 20 and preferably 30 years at his or her disposal before buying a few bottles of this.
An April, 2009 visit to this estate - my first in many years - convinced me of Peter Barth's seriousness and talent, and revealed many wines worthy of the great potential of the vast von Schonborn acreage. Last September, I was thrilled by an even finer collection. The number of separate and vineyard-specific bottlings here (as explained - along with other recent developments at this estate - in issue 185) is nowadays intentionally limited. Additionally, in 2008 Barth adopted a very conservative approach, essaying few nobly sweet wines, and while finding his best fruit from top parcels worthy of Erstes Gewachs bottlings, he did not render parallel Spatlese trocken bottlings from the same sites as in other recent years. -Our late start picking this year, with the first Riesling on October 17,- Barth points out, -would have been considered entirely normal 15 years ago. But honestly, by the time we started, I think more than half of the Rheingau had already been picked, a lot of that wines with green, unripe notes and resulting in wines that were then de-acidified.-
Various importers, including Dee Vine Wines San Francisco, CA; tel. (877) 389- 9463, Slocum & Sons, North Haven, CT; tel. (203) 239-8000, Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700
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