Note to reader: Not that we have ever been shy with word-counts, but with the new year we are going to resist every impulse to dumb things down, to economize, to summarize, to make things slick or easy. The world has begun feeling so much less because of all this efficiency. Please, if you can, resist this false ease, the fleeting dopamine hit… spend a moment with us.
Thank you for your most valuable asset: your time.
A special and curious convergence is underway: The new GG releases from both Florian Lauer and Frank Schönleber have just arrived. Both of these growers will soon follow suit. It is the first time either has been to New York in over five years; I can’t wait to see my friends.
Florian and Frank will attend Rieslingfeier 2025 on January 18th and then remain in the city for only two nights this January. While the Gala Dinner is sold out, there are a few tickets available for the Grand Tasting where you can meet both of these growers and taste.
We are also planning an industry-only lunch tasting with these growers on Monday, January 20th, and a special, mid-career retrospective dinner with both growers on that Tuesday the 21st following Rieslingfeier; please reply to this email if you are interested in more information.
There is no question that Florian and Frank find themselves at very meaningful points in their respective careers. Both are now transitioning from the youthful biographies of taking over their family estates to new roles as the more mature statesmen of German wine.
They have both had an immense role in German wine over the last twenty years.
Would the German wine world have the stature, the excitement, the energy it has today, without these two estates, without the particular drive and focus of these two growers?
Hear me out.
For two decades Florian Lauer has been barreling through the prim and proper world of German wine (and German wine legislation) with all the delicacy and etiquette of a rampaging bull (seems only proper for a one-time punk and later dark metal drummer).
In a culture of exceedingly delineated categories, a tidy, black-and-white culture of dry and off-dry, Lauer long ago extended one rather prominent finger (located in the middle of the hand) and proceeded to produce a bevvy of uncategorizable Rieslings that flatly rejected the binary categories made manifest in the 1971 wine law.
Not only were most of Lauer’s Rieslings neither sweet nor dry, neither “Kabinett” nor “GG,” they reached back into the pre-1971 world for their names, parcels, and vineyard sites.
What’s a “Kern”? What in the hell is a “Stirn”?
These were questions I had to ask Lauer twenty years ago. All of these terms had been outlawed, erased by the same culture that had created them with only one idea in mind: making things simpler and easier to sell. As it turns out, “Kern” is an old parcel name, referring to the industrialist who cleared part of the Kupp in the late 19th century; “Stirn” the word for forehead, applied here to the “forehead” part of the vineyard, the top of the mountain, rounded and bald, if not for the slate and vines.
We were way beyond “Sonnenuhr;” this was a completely new language. Florian had a line in the early years: “Rieslings for advanced learners.” It was the acknowledgement of the risk of his enterprise, but also the calling card for those who wanted to dig deeper.
To my mind, overemphasizing the visionary radicalness of Lauer’s neither-dry-nor-sweet oeuvre is impossible. When I first tasted his wines in the early 2000s, they were unlike anything else I had ever had.
I was dumbfounded.
It’s important to note that Lauer’s wines went cult, not because they were expensive or rare (the foundation for nearly every cult wine on the market today), but because they were radical.
They were unlike anything and everything else.
Lauer’s influence is obvious by the fact that nowadays nearly every significant estate in Germany makes at least one wine that “fermented naturally to a barely off-dry level,” most often bearing the name of a pre-1971 parcel.
This is all taken directly from Lauer’s playbook, mind you after he proved that it was financially viable to do so.
On the other hand, the fact that two decades later, Lauer’s most complex wines remain rather affordable and rather available, while the price of “GGs” has risen dramatically, means that most estates have only dipped a finger into this complex style. Even twenty years later, even with Lauer’s fame, these are not easy wines to sell. The question, “what the hell is a Kern?” remains a question that is asked, and often.
It is not an easy hierarchy; it is labyrinthine and complex and constantly changing. Twenty years later, Lauer is still misunderstood, overlooked. He is still radical.
In this narrative, if Lauer is the anarchist, Schönleber is very different. Schönleber is the ascetic.
Schönleber’s influence is much subtler. It is a narrative of unrelenting perfectionism, of quiet, meditative, singular focus, of a faith in austerity and rigor, perhaps nowhere better expressed than in the now twenty-year history of the estate’s two Grosses Gewächs bottlings – the ones on offer today, in fact.
It is my belief that Schönleber understood the GG earlier, and more clearly, than nearly any other estate in Germany and has, as part and parcel of this understanding, made the most consistently great GGs in Germany.
It is my belief these are both among the most profound German wines being made, as well as the most subtle. These wines are just immensely deep and detailed; but they are not in the slightest bit flashy. Many of the best bottles require 5+ years of cellaring or the confidence to open a bottle and drink it two or three days later. Truly.
The narrative I’ve told of the 2004 Frühlingsplätzchen GG changing my life – of cementing my belief that dry German Rieslings could be every bit as grand, if not grander, than the greatest of white Burgundies – is partly embellished history, partly the impact of a young wine on an even younger palate… yet it is also partly because this is a legendary wine.
Had I not tasted this wine multiple times since this first storied encounter, had I not experienced many (many) other comparable 2004s, had I not closely followed the story of the GG in the following twenty years, I wouldn’t be able to stand this ground.
But I have, and I do. And many others have as well.
The amount of serious, serious wine collectors who quietly whisper to me about the Schönleber wines at dinners is mind-boggling. These are easily among the greatest dry Rieslings in Germany. More than nearly all other German Rieslings, I believe, they require time.
The entire aesthetic of Emrich-Schönleber is quiet, consistent. There is nothing showy, no gimmicks. There is simply a quiet, meditative depth. What is built to last two or more decades cannot always dazzle in youth. Whispers can’t be shouted; you know what I mean.
And now, in just a few weeks, both of my friends, Florian and Frank, are going to be in town to present their newest wines.
I am overjoyed. There is much to celebrate.
The bottles from both of these producers remain relatively available and relatively affordable. For me, for you, for us, this situation is perfect. This is the system actually working. The growers can lead good lives; it is sustainable. And we can drink some of the most exceptional wines on earth at a fair price.
Can it get any better than this?
If you are interested in buying the wines, please send us an email at orders@vomboden.com and a real human will respond to your inquiry. Please be patient with us… and happy New Year!