Domaine Trimbach: Some Wines

To the capital city and to Good Brothers for a tasting with Julien Trimbach, the young man who will one day be the 13th generation winemaker at Domaine Trimbach, one of the best Alsace producers (top three, I'd say). He's a remarkably accomplished speaker, and had some very interesting things to say.

I've never heard another winemaker (or perhaps I should say apprentice winemaker) talk so much about the taste of soil. Perhaps that reflects the diversity of soil types in Alsace, which range from granite, to limestone, to iron-rich soils, and even volcanic to a kind of crumbled granite called grés de Vosges.

We tasted through eleven wines taken from the currently available range, plus a beautiful Pinot Gris from 1990. The house style is decidedly dry, which suits my palate very well.

Riesling Réserve 2014
The grapes for this cuvee are harvested from several different soil types and vineyards, but M Trimbach described it as having a "limestone nose". It's a zingy, fresh wine, with intense lime and grapefruit aromas and a long lasting citric acidity. Delicious.

Riesling Sélection de Vielles Vignes 2012
Described by M. Trimbach as "a classic vintage", he also told us that for this vintage 80% of the fruit is from the Vorderer-Haguenau vineyard, from vines over 80yo. At 4.5 grams per litre of residual sugar it's still a dry wine, but definitely softer than the Reserve. I found a beautiful waxy note on both the nose and palate, and the citrus fruit elements were so ripe they seemed almost tropical.

Cuvée Frédéric Emile 2008
Trimbach are famous for their refusal to use the Alsatian Grand Cru designations on their labels (although that is changing now), and Freddy Emile is in fact a blend of Riesling from two different Grand Cru vineyards, so they wouldn't be allowed to label it as such. That doesn't stop it being a fabulous drop. Where the Vielles Vignes was showing spicy notes, this has evolved into savouriness, while still showing the intense citrus fruit of the younger wines. The texture was wonderfully buttery too.

Clos Sainte Hune 2008
M. Trimbach had stressed that the company likes to hold back wines until they are ready for release, but I guess that's not feasible in this case. Even López de Heredia in Rioja don't wait a quarter century to release Vina Tondonia. And that's the sort of time to mature that I think this wine probably needs.

The Clos Ste Hune is a lieu dit within the Rosacker Grand Cru in Hunawihr. There are just 1.67 hectares of sixty year old Riesling vines, yielding a mere 10,000 bottles annually, on average. Clos Ste Hune's soil is a kind of shell filled limestone called muschelkalk, which is the kind of uniquely Alsatian word which illustrates the mixed Franco-German heritage of the region nicely.

The nose showed petrol and a leafiness - not quite leaf mold, but old leaves. There was also a silky, creamy, mineralic whiteness, as if I were smelling white chocolate, but sans vanilla, or some sort of very rich white flowery perfume.

The palate was soft, rounded, and intense, but very, very tight. It was very well balanced, with a dominant flavour of lime. Of all the wines, this was the only one which seemed warm in the finish. To me, it was on the same level of quality as the other wines I tasted, which I'm inclined to attribute to its relative youth.

Pinot Gris Réserve 2014
Described as "Pinot d'expression", I found this to be very savoury and spicy, indeed almost meaty. I found chestnuts on the nose, which I've never seen in a wine before. The palate was much more about fruit, with green apples and grapefruit, plus a leafier version of the spices from the nose.

Pinot Gris Réserve Personelle 2013
Made with grapes from the Grand Cru of Osterberg, this wine was rather gentler than the 2014, and there was more fruit on the nose; ripe, honeyed yellow apples, even a touch of banana. The palate was sweet and rich, with a lovely soft lemon sherbet finish.

Gewurztraminer Réserve 2011
Less intense than the previous wines, this showed classic Gewurz notes of rose, lychee, and/or turkish delight (take your pick. Or we could just agree to use Gewurztraminer as a descriptor). The palate was very easy going, with a tasty background note of dry savoury spice which somehow made me think of suede.

Gewurztraminer Cuvée des Seigneurs de Ribeaupierre 2011
Drawn from two Grand Cru vineyards, Altenberg Mandelberg, this wine smelt more spicy than the Reserve, but had less of the floral elements. The palate was riper, too, with the fruit veering into mango territory and a lovely broad mid-toned spiciness.

Pinot Noir Réserve 2015
This was a surprise - a tasty surprise. From a dry vintage, and made "without oak" (actually 80 hectolitre very old oak tanks), it was juicy, fruity, clean, and utterly gluggable. Or, as M. Trimbach more elegantly put it, "not an intellectual wine". The nose was cherry syrup, the palate was redcurrants. Lightly chilled on a warm day, this would be gone in twenty minutes.

Pinot Gris Vendanges Tardives 2008
This wine perhaps whould have been aired for a little longer, as it initially showed that hint of cabbage which occasionally appears in old whites. With time it developed concentrated buttery and mossy notes. The palate was sweet, with butter orange peel, some green lime notes, and a surprisingly light body for a VT.

Gewurztraminer Vendages Tardives 2014
This was described as being a "difficult vintage".

A nose of ripe roses and powdered ginger, which evolved over time to show some leafiness and a slight mushroom character. The palate was very fresh, light, and completely unsticky - brilliant acidity. I found flavours of ripe yellow apples and honey.

Pinot Gris Vendanges Tardives 1990
A wee treat from the cellar to finish off. If you made a plate of wholemeal toast with lashings of butter and runny honey, and then took away the toast, then you'd have the nose of this wine – except of course that buttered toast is never really elegant, and the wine was so very elegant.

The palate was soft and elegantly glamorous, with plenty of acidity to suggest that the vintage will evolve for many years to come. It was much, much sweeter than the other VTs, and had a glorious complex spiciness which might have been cedar wood.

Rosy Wine

Rather than writing about the more famous wines in the picture above, this evening's post is about the Grüss Gewürztraminer 2012.

Grüss is a family-run domaine founded in 1962 at Eguisheim which these days extends to 15ha spread over 42 parcels. The vineyards are managed using the lutte raisonné approach. They don't have a website; my information comes from this page on alsace-vintage.com.

This is a very fresh, youthful Gewürz, with plenty of floral notes, citrus, and not much spiciness. There is also some aroma which reminds me of chalk. The common comparison of Gewürztraminer to roses seems very apt here, since the lemony-chalk smell is something I often find in roses.

The palate is off-dry (or perhaps medium-dry), mid bodied and not very acidic. Also quite fat, although not quite oily in texture. There's a lovely richness and a hard to pin down woody spiciness, perhaps cloves, reminiscent too of edinburgh rock.

This is a very straightforward, decent wine. Less prestigious than its fellows in the line-up above, but a good typical example of Alsace Gewürz.

Gruss Muscat d'Alsace Ottonel 2009

I had to go and look it up, and the Oxford Companion to Wine says that Muscat Ottonel is "paler in every way, a relative parvenu".

Well, in that case it's probably just as well that M. Gruss isn't growing Muscat Blanc à petits grains, since this bottle was amply aromatic enough to please us, and indeed to stand up very well to the spicy pakora we were having as a starter.

The nose was really very fresh, with white flower, lime jelly, and mealy or grainy aromas, along with a touch of something green and herbaceous, like angelica.

The palate was fresh, juicy, and just off dry. A layered, complex wine, with lots of floral loveliness coming and going to an almost oily, steely minerality.

The flowers versus minerality had the effect of making the wine seem to gently swing back and forth from dry to off-dry. I do so like it when a wine constantly changes, and this is a cracking example. Really very lovely, 4+++.

Where there's life...

... there's pleasure.

In this case, it was the second half of a bottle of d'Orschwihr Bollenberg Riesling '08 which I had left in the fridge for a couple of days. The life in it was expressed as a lovely tension, a pull back and forth between sweet and dry, from lime-splashed minerality to soft honey, an excellent 4.

On the following night the wine was still there, if quieter, but very refreshing, suggestive of the moist smell of a damp but sunny glade early in the morning.

Another day later and there was only a one-dimensional grapefruity sourness - the genie had fled the bottle: no life, and pleasure only in using the last half glass to enhance a tomato sauce.

So, lesson learnt, I shan't leave Riesling any longer than three days. Or perhaps I shall. After all, to be entertained by the same wine for four days is pretty good value for money, don't you think?

( Interesting aside. d'Orschwihr's website says the 2007 Bollenberg Riesling is from a site of 1.5 hectares yielding 15 hectolitres per hectare. Assuming that the 2008 vintage is the same there were only, hmmm, 2800 bottles made. So if you like the sound of this one, the answer is probably, "tough cheese".)

Sweet Roses and Sunshine

Comparisons to fruit, vegetables, animals, minerals or what have you are all very well, but it's illuminating to compare more directly, so as to see what is really going on.

This thought was triggered by a glass of Trimbach Gewürztraminer '06 (truly excellent wine, 4+), since it bore a strong scent of rose petals and lychees, along with an interesting mealy, cooked grain character which for me is very typical of Alsace. And by a handy coincidence, the next day I was in a lovely garden with several varieties of rose. None of them bethought me of Gewürz. In fact, the more I sniffed, the more I found other, un-flowery scents. One had a definite lemon sherbet edge and something of milk, while another was very rose-y, but in an expensive talc sort of way. A third was green and fresh, but also, surprisingly, buttery.

I suppose Gewürz will still remind me of roses, but perhaps now the memory will be more vivid, and precise. Or perhaps not, but it was a lovely way to spend twenty minutes on a sunny summer day.

Hugel Tokay

I was going to start by saying that this addiction to sweet wine has gone too far, but in fact the interesting thing about many such wines is that the sweetness is overshadowed by the other characteristics. Tonight's little beaut is a fine case in point. We thank you, SmallFierceGlasses.

Hugel "Hommage à Jean Hugel" Tokay Pinot Gris 1997 is a lovely, exemplary Alsatian PG, with a bitter orange note to it, and a wee hint of ginger in the finish. Slightly watery, seeming slightly sweet, and low acid, the balance was ideal. I don't think it would age much further - lack of acid, you see, and the fruit is fading rather - but right now it was spot on. 15-16/20

At an Alsatian gourmet dinner last night

Smiley did the hard work of matching the food and wine, I got to go and talk about the wines, tra-la!

Billecart-Salmon grand cru blanc de blancs NV
(with watermelon)
This had a fine creamy mousse, concentrated lemon and cream flavours, and something of biscuits about it. Lemon meringue pie in a glass. It went surprisingly well with watermelon, although I was too nervous to really enjoy it.

Albert Mann Tokay Pinot Gris 02002
(smoked asparagus, green pea and truffle cappuccino)
I have previously rated this as excellent, but I don't think it was quite as good on this occasion. It did seem like a great match for the cappuccino, although sadly there was hardly enough of that to taste, let alone fill up on. The non-veggies pretty much acclaimed this as the star of the evening, paired with foie gras.

Hugel Riesling 02003
Carillon Côte de Beaune-Villages 02001
(an "interpretation" of pasta which featured no pasta at all. Brilliant!)
The riesling was neutral against the "pasta". On its own it was a fine glass, with a strong blossom nose and great limeiness on the palate, balanced by very smooth mouthfeel. The pinot, on the other hand, was a very, very good match for the concentrated dark flavours in the mushrooms and aubergine. It had the ideal balance of earthy, barnyard stink against light berry fruitiness in the nose, while the smooth tannin and gentle acidity on the palate sat very agreeably with the food.

Leitz Rüdesheimer Schlossburg Spätlese 02002
(Alsatian plum tart with Mirabel brandy ice cream and schenkeles)
This had a slight biscuitiness on the nose which kinda echoed the champagne. A very fine dessert wine, the pure long acids precisely balancing the rich concentrated sweetness. The ice cream was the only element of the dessert which was too much for the wine - I think it must have been one third part plum brandy. One element of the dish, a single plum, stuffed with chopped almonds and baked, had me grinning and chortling, so tasty was it.