Germany's Own Montrachet.
The Grand Cru Rieslings of Emrich-Schonleber.

Dear Artisans,

There is a hillside in Burgundy where dry white wine reached its peak, and the world agreed to pay whatever it asks. A bottle from Le Montrachet starts in the many hundreds and climbs into five figures.

Germany has a hillside like that too.

It is called Halenberg, a steep wall of blue slate above the village of Monzingen in the upper Nahe, and the family that farms its heart has been growing vines there since the mid-1700s. When their grand cru bottling from this hill earned 98 points from James Suckling this year, nobody who follows German wine was surprised. The only surprise is the price.

Grosses Gewachs, literally “great growth,” is Germany's legal equivalent of grand cru: the designation is reserved for the country's officially classified top vineyards, held to strict yields, and always bone dry. When you see “GG” on a German label, read it exactly the way you read grand cru on a white Burgundy.

The difference is what the market charges for it. A grand cru white Burgundy of comparable critical standing costs several times more, and the famous names cost more than that. The Halenberg GG is $104.97.

The Schonlebers have farmed Monzingen since the mid-18th century and went all-in on wine in the late 1960s. Today Frank Schonleber makes the wines from the family's two great sites, Halenberg and Fruhlingsplatzchen, on stony slate soils where the berries grow small and intensely aromatic.

It is a cool corner of Germany, ringed by the Soonwald forest. On sunny days warm thermal winds rise from the valley through the best parcels, and the family will tell you to look up: falcons and buzzards ride those thermals in slow circles over the vines. Warm days, forest-cooled nights, slow ripening. That is the entire recipe for Riesling with both power and nerve.

Critics do not usually write sentences like the one James Suckling wrote about the 2023 Halenberg: “Either you're strong enough for this radical wine, or it's stronger than you.” Wine Advocate called it one of the most impressive dry wines of the vintage in all of Germany. Vinous summed it up as “Nahe, stone and lemon in a glass.”

The vintage helps. The family compares 2023 to their 2019s: alcohol in the ideal range, fine Riesling acidity fully preserved, and a fruit expression that is more approachable young than usual, without giving up any of the structure underneath.

Great Riesling ages like grand cru Burgundy, and the critics' windows here are extraordinary: Vinous drinks the Halenberg GG from 2028 to 2060, and the little Kabinett all the way to 2055. These are wines your cellar will still be pouring decades from now.

So build the set: the Grand Cru for the cellar, the Kabinett for the table, and the bone-dry Sekt for the moment the first guest walks in.

From the deep slate of the Halenberg wall: smoke and crushed rock on the nose, candied and fresh citrus underneath, and a palate that is dense and powerful yet zesty, long and persistently salty. This is the estate's flagship dry wine, and in 2023 it is one of the great white wines of Europe.

Picked in the Halenberg and Niederberg, this is the trick only German Kabinett can pull: 52 grams of residual sugar that vanishes into 9.4 grams of acidity, leaving something light, bright and impossibly refreshing. Grapefruit, blossom, citrus and stone, and low enough in alcohol to pour at lunch.

What happens when a grand cru Riesling house makes sparkling wine: brioche over yellow apple and stone fruit, a creamy mousse, and a bone-dry 1.5 g/L dosage that keeps it razor clean. Freshly disgorged in February 2025. This is the bottle you open while the Halenberg is still in the decanter.

Burgundy taught the world what a grand cru white is worth. The Schonleber family has spent 250 years proving the same thing on a slate wall in the Nahe, and the critics have caught up: 98 points, “a masterpiece,” drinking windows that reach 2060.

The market has not caught up yet. Take the Grand Cru for the cellar at $104.97, the Kabinett for the table at $39.99, and the Sekt for the doorbell at $44.99.

Cheers,

— James Tran