AJ | Pale, bright gold. Exciting aromas here in typical Schoenenbourg jungle style—all plant sap, tendril, and fat, sappy leaves. A fine architecture of scent, though the fruits are subdued: pear, quince, even green banana. Overall, though: What a nose! Big, powerful, a Hummer of a Riesling, coming sliding down off the hill laden with jungle plants and fruits. Big, thick, tangled, extractive, long, fiery though sappy: just super stuff. Alsace GC totally at its best. This is very, very good Riesling, though also very untypical Riesling—above all, it's Schoenenbourg. Multidimensional and totally satisfying. And 8 years old already. This completely authoritative wine deserves the widest audience, and if you harbour any doubts about Alsace, try this! 95
SR | Clear, precise, and almost tropical in its fruit aromas opens this 2015 Riesling, which is indeed Riesling intermingled with the iodine flintiness of the Schoenenbourg terroir. On the palate, this is a lush and generous, very intense and saline, finely tannic Riesling, which is still extremely young and provided with some oak tannins that still need to be better integrated. There is a certain sweetness but it is rounding the fruit rather than masking the terroir. Highly promising. 95
AR | A surprisingly youthful, pale, lemon-green in color, this also doesn't seem to have moved a huge amount in aromatic evolution in the seven and a half years since the harvest; still fresh and bright in aromas, there's a fine tingle on the tongue, and no shortage of intense, lime-like citrusy fruit quality when you taste, thanks to serious concentration and richness, but not at the expense of delicacy; on the contrary, the evident mineral structure of fruit-flavor concentration and acidity here has maintained an excellent balance, and it's not as if it's even out of the straps yet. Impressive or what? 95