Emrich Schonleber Fruhlingsplatzchen (Red Slate) GG Riesling 2023

Very serious territory now. As I said in my introduction to this offer, this wine is about uplift, aromatics, (relative) openness and expressiveness. This is all in comparison to the more brooding and powerful Halenberg GG from blue slate. This is the prettier example of Riesling and an example of terroir sitting in plain sight, but the common thread here between the two GGs is the intense minerality that the two wines posses. – Ches Cook, Five Way Cellars.

This is the Grand Cru sites with what I think is the greatest name out there – pronounced “Froooh-lings-PLATS-shen.” Go ahead and say it, it’ll make you feel good. It translates, roughly, to “little place of spring.” While the Halenberg is the denser, more monumental wine, with likely more stuffing and structure to age longer, I’ll admit the Frühlingsplätzchen is my favorite. There, I said it. I just love the soaring aromatics, the sharpness of the wine, the linear lightness and delicacy. They are rarely about fruit as much as they are about a saline quality, mineral and flower. This is a superb, superb GG that dances on the palate like a good old Spätlese Trocken… even Kabinett Trocken? Vom Boden (American importer).