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Schafer-Frohlich

2009 Schafer-Frohlich, Schlossbockelheimer Felsenberg Riesling GG, Nahe 3L

Germany Riesling Nahe 3L

Wine Advocate

92

Vinous

92
/
2009 Schafer-Frohlich, Schlossbockelheimer Felsenberg Riesling GG, Nahe 3L
Schafer-Frohlich

2009 Schafer-Frohlich, Schlossbockelheimer Felsenberg Riesling GG, Nahe 3L

Germany Riesling Nahe 3L

Wine Advocate

92

Vinous

92
/

Sourced from 3 different terraces of stony volcanic- and quartz-based soils, Felsenberg is routinely one of the most complex if not as concentrated as Kupfergrube. Citrus, dried flowers & spices with some smoke make up a vivid aromatic profile, with a delicious salty finish to boot.

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The classic story - a 2-century old family vineyard finally finds the right hands in the 9th generation. Tim Fröhlich made his first vintage in 1995 and has since been held as one of the greatest winemaking talents in Germany, regularly creating wines of both density and energy.

Schafer-Frohlich

The Nahe is home to some famous German estates but Schafer-Fröhlich is tops among them, counting among their 21 hectares of vines the famous Felseneck, Kupfergrube and Felsenberg. As with so many classic German estates, the slopes of these vineyards are so intense that everything must be harvested by hand, resulting in a rigorous selection process of tiny grapes that intensify the flavors and quality of his six GG wines.

Since he ascended to the winemaking seat in 1995, Tim made some smart trades and acquisitions of land, increasing his family's holdings to include a fine palate of vineyard and soil types; Felseneck's quartzite soils provide an elegant, defined wine. Felsenberg and Kupfergrube have volcanic influences, providing richness and more spiced mineral tones; Halenberg's blue slate and Frühlingsplätzchen's red slate offer unique, more crystalline qualities, in their own right top Grand Crus of the Nahe.

Tim's strengths are clear in poor or hot vintages, as he is quite adept in managing his vineyard to weather the varied storms; his wines are consistently stunning in quality, be they of rainy vintages like 2014 or hot as in 2018. Without a doubt, some of Germany's best wines come from this estate every single year.

Meet the Producer

Schafer-Frohlich

The classic story - a 2-century old family vineyard finally finds the right hands in the 9th generation. Tim Fröhlich made his first vintage in 1995 and has since been held as one of the greatest winemaking talents in Germany, regularly creating wines of both density and energy.

The Nahe is home to some famous German estates but Schafer-Fröhlich is tops among them, counting among their 21 hectares of vines the famous Felseneck, Kupfergrube and Felsenberg. As with so many classic German estates, the slopes of these vineyards are so intense that everything must be harvested by hand, resulting in a rigorous selection process of tiny grapes that intensify the flavors and quality of his six GG wines.

Since he ascended to the winemaking seat in 1995, Tim made some smart trades and acquisitions of land, increasing his family's holdings to include a fine palate of vineyard and soil types; Felseneck's quartzite soils provide an elegant, defined wine. Felsenberg and Kupfergrube have volcanic influences, providing richness and more spiced mineral tones; Halenberg's blue slate and Frühlingsplätzchen's red slate offer unique, more crystalline qualities, in their own right top Grand Crus of the Nahe.

Tim's strengths are clear in poor or hot vintages, as he is quite adept in managing his vineyard to weather the varied storms; his wines are consistently stunning in quality, be they of rainy vintages like 2014 or hot as in 2018. Without a doubt, some of Germany's best wines come from this estate every single year.

The Wine Advocate

Wine Advocate

92

Mint, pennyroyal, oregano, and a further plethora of herbs and greenhouse-like leafy and floral notes rise from the glass of Frohlich’s 2009 Schlossbockelheimer Felsenberg Riesling Grosses Gewachs, which is suffused with bright fresh lime, rich nut oils, ripe apricot, and savory shrimp shell reduction, and finishes with memorable as well as saliva-inducing length. This should be well worth following for at least 10-12 years. Tim Frohlich (for some of whose comments on the 2009 vintage consult my general introduction to this report) continues his streak of ever more intensive vineyard work on ever-greater acreage, rendering a persistently expansive range of phenomenally high-quality bottlings that covers a stylistic breadth few German wineries are interested in, much less can equal. “Once I began smelling the musts of these 2009s” says Frohlich, “I knew that this was what I always wanted to achieve.” Reliance on ambient yeasts has become the norm here and – like late harvest (this year not commencing until the second half of October) – something that Frohlich passionately advocates. This year, Frohlich left-behind more solid matter in the tanks to feed the fermentations – which, for the dry wines, extended into February – and ended up with correspondingly generous lees on which, as usual, the young wines rested after fermenting (although he still bottled the top dry wines by late June). This approach to fermentation and elevage made particular sense, opines Frohlich, due to the quality of this year’s fruit. He showed me a photograph of transparent, utterly blemish-free but already freckled golden-green Riesling berries that delivers a profound lesson ? once he explains that it was taken six weeks before the first bunch was cut for the 2009 Gutsriesling! “The truth is,” contends Frohlich, “with grapes this perfect, cultured yeasts are liable to give you wines that are dominated by sheer peachy, straightforward fruit at the expense of differentiation, complexity, and authenticity.” On the other hand, he thought it best to tread very cautiously this year when it came to pre-fermentative skin contact. There’s certainly no need to worry on any of those counts given how things turned out, and the dry wines in the present collection don’t reflect even the moderate levels of alcohol that they in fact possess (in the top wines, around 13%). Many are the Grosse Gewachse rendered in very small quantities, about which growers are sometimes reluctant to impart the actual production numbers. Tim Frohlich will proudly tell you that nearly half of his huge vine acreage in Felseneck made his qualitative cut for Grosses Gewachs, and the totality of his four 2009 Grosse Gewachse represents 25,000 bottles. At the botrytis end of the spectrum, despite the paucity of shriveled grapes, Frohlich relates that “I had six people employed exclusively for picking out whatever raisins they could find,” and the result is a dazzling range of nobly sweet elixirs.

Vinous

Vinous

92

Very rich aromas of pineapple, honeysuckle and acacia. A dense apricot pit flavor is nicely juxtaposed with slate-driven minerality. The finish displays excellent depth and spicy minerality. First-class.

What the Critics are Saying

The Wine Advocate

Wine Advocate

92

Mint, pennyroyal, oregano, and a further plethora of herbs and greenhouse-like leafy and floral notes rise from the glass of Frohlich’s 2009 Schlossbockelheimer Felsenberg Riesling Grosses Gewachs, which is suffused with bright fresh lime, rich nut oils, ripe apricot, and savory shrimp shell reduction, and finishes with memorable as well as saliva-inducing length. This should be well worth following for at least 10-12 years. Tim Frohlich (for some of whose comments on the 2009 vintage consult my general introduction to this report) continues his streak of ever more intensive vineyard work on ever-greater acreage, rendering a persistently expansive range of phenomenally high-quality bottlings that covers a stylistic breadth few German wineries are interested in, much less can equal. “Once I began smelling the musts of these 2009s” says Frohlich, “I knew that this was what I always wanted to achieve.” Reliance on ambient yeasts has become the norm here and – like late harvest (this year not commencing until the second half of October) – something that Frohlich passionately advocates. This year, Frohlich left-behind more solid matter in the tanks to feed the fermentations – which, for the dry wines, extended into February – and ended up with correspondingly generous lees on which, as usual, the young wines rested after fermenting (although he still bottled the top dry wines by late June). This approach to fermentation and elevage made particular sense, opines Frohlich, due to the quality of this year’s fruit. He showed me a photograph of transparent, utterly blemish-free but already freckled golden-green Riesling berries that delivers a profound lesson ? once he explains that it was taken six weeks before the first bunch was cut for the 2009 Gutsriesling! “The truth is,” contends Frohlich, “with grapes this perfect, cultured yeasts are liable to give you wines that are dominated by sheer peachy, straightforward fruit at the expense of differentiation, complexity, and authenticity.” On the other hand, he thought it best to tread very cautiously this year when it came to pre-fermentative skin contact. There’s certainly no need to worry on any of those counts given how things turned out, and the dry wines in the present collection don’t reflect even the moderate levels of alcohol that they in fact possess (in the top wines, around 13%). Many are the Grosse Gewachse rendered in very small quantities, about which growers are sometimes reluctant to impart the actual production numbers. Tim Frohlich will proudly tell you that nearly half of his huge vine acreage in Felseneck made his qualitative cut for Grosses Gewachs, and the totality of his four 2009 Grosse Gewachse represents 25,000 bottles. At the botrytis end of the spectrum, despite the paucity of shriveled grapes, Frohlich relates that “I had six people employed exclusively for picking out whatever raisins they could find,” and the result is a dazzling range of nobly sweet elixirs.

Vinous

Vinous

92

Very rich aromas of pineapple, honeysuckle and acacia. A dense apricot pit flavor is nicely juxtaposed with slate-driven minerality. The finish displays excellent depth and spicy minerality. First-class.