Four months before our annual late summer trip to Germany a few years ago, I sent a fax to Werner Schönleber (shown here with his son, Frank) asking if we might visit his winery to taste. I had just read about him in the French-language version of Vinum the influential European wine magazine, and I remembered that he’s a close friend of Jochen Ratzenberger.
Schönleber replied with the address of his American importer. I was embarrassed, of course. I should have checked.
If I read anything in Wine Spectator other than Matt Kramer’s column, I would have known–not only that Schönleber was already represented in the U.S. by a famous importer of fine German wines, but also that he made “the only classic-rated wine” (how presumptious) of the widely (and erroneously) dismissed 2000 vintage.
Anyway, I thanked, but no-thanked him, explaining that we prefer to buy wine from within our own supply chain, directly from the producers themselves. I expected and heard no more until about a week before our departure, when a fax arrived from Schönleber’s son Frank, announcing that they had ended the relationship with their American importer, and that we were welcome to come and taste.
As usual, I had already crammed every hour of every day of the trip with winery visits, and there was no time left to schedule a visit other than a couple of hours in the afternoon of the last day, on our way to the Frankfurt airport. We agreed on the time, and Werner greeted us himself.
No producer in my experience has ever been better prepared for a fi rst meeting. There were nearly forty wines ready to taste. And no producer has better understood what it is we are trying to accomplish.
Schönleber is the perfect example of a small producer for whom the farm- stand model (enthusiastic, direct sales to consumers, in a relatively restricted local market) works better than the supermarket model (the national distribution system). In the first year of our relationship, more Schönleber wine was sold in Moore Brothers stores than had been sold in the previous year in the whole of the United States.