Split personality seems to have become the order of the day with Schonborn's upper-end nobly sweet wines of this vintage, as their 2007 Erbacher Marcobrunn Riesling Beerenauslese exhibits gooseberry jam, fresh lemon, and honey; displays tooth-jarring acidity 12.4 grams exactly along with not only caramel, but burnt sugar; and finishes with a strident, dynamic interplay of sweet and sour. it's not, to be sure, as though such high acidity is either unknown in botrytized 2007 Rieslings or inherently inharmonious. But here it simply sticks out, at least at this youthful year-old stage. Incredibly intense, unruly, this may yet be great wine, but only someone with lots of disposable income, patience, and his or her own high life-expectancy will ever find out, I fear. This wine was effectively the negative selection culled-out to in the process of making T.B.A. Peter Barth took over cellar duties in 2001, and direction of the entire, fabled Schonborn estate in 2006. I had not visited in all that time - only heard rumors of a revival (tales of a sort that are too often false alarms when it comes to large, underperforming, noble Rheingau estates) - so I am happy to report that the renaissance of Schloss Schonborn is for real. Ten years ago, I found Schonborn's dry wines too austere and their sweet wines exaggeratedly so. Examples of these extremes have not been eliminated, but there are plenty of gorgeous and without doubt age-worthy wines that steer a steady stylistic course. Although - like most large German estates - Schonborn has pruned the number of single-vineyard wines and styles on offer when compared with the enormous annual line-ups that prevailed until a decade ago, this has been done with sensitivity to synergistic blends, and allowing plenty of room for each of the domaine's most celebrated vineyards - in particular their monopole Hattenheimer Pfaffenberg with 12 bottlings this vintage! and Erbacher Marcobrunn - to show-off. Various importers, including Dee Vine Wines San Francisco, CA; tel. (877) 389-9463, Slocum & Sons, North Haven, CT; tel. 203-239-8000, Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700