Lemon grass, lavender, and hints of the more familiar mint and sage scent the Eymaels’ 2008 Scheurebe Spatlese trocken, which hits the palate like shafts of sunlight in its white grapefruit and high-toned, pungent herbal concentration. This wine picked already in the first days of October displays the lift and refreshment characteristic for the vintage but that one does not so often encounter in dry Scheurebe. Actually, one doesn’t encounter dry Scheurebe that much these days, period. The Eymaels at one point reached 80% sweet wine from this variety, but they are attracting a new clientele, and now the roughly 50% of their Scheurebe production that is trocken sells out quickly, almost entirely within Germany. The wine continues to come from the Herrenberg, but inside Germany, Eymaels have eliminated the Pradikat names from their non-Riesling wines, and in the case of this wine, from all of its labels. It threatened to become another 2006, said Jan Eymael of the mid-September, 2008 rain, but even in the warmest parts of the Pfalz the weather stayed relatively cool, and he did not pick the first Rieslings until September 30, then continuing off and on for three weeks. The later it got, the better the grapes became, comments Eymael. Another month on the vine allowed for the November 18 picking of two magnificent nobly sweet Scheureben.Importer: Rudi Wiest, Cellars International, Carlsbad, CA; tel. (800) 596-9463