The Dirlers’ 2009 Gewurztraminer Kessler Vendange Tardive puts me in mind of sweetened black tea such as is popular in the southern U.S., mingled with herbal lozenges that harbor just enough bitterness to help offset the wine’s sheer sucrosity. Certainly the finish is sustained, though you will need to have a sweet tooth to relish it. As with the range of Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer this year chez Dirler, one notes the tendency for relatively warm and generally outstanding sites to have forced growers’ hands and ended up being picked before the real phenolic typicity of Traminer had been achieved, but already at extremely elevated must weights. As usual chez Dirler, I was forced during my most recent visit to take a slightly abbreviated tour of the two most recent collections on account of this family’s sheer multitude of bottlings, but it is clear from their 2008s that this remains one of the most frequently exciting – and generally consistent – sources of wine in Alsace, making it unfortunate that one doesn’t see Dirler-Cade wines more often in the U.S. Moreover, this is an estate that’s rendering highly distinctive; often deliciously unorthodox; but never fashion-pandering innovations while retaining a clear and constant vision of how the classic cepages of Alsace should perform in sites that can boast some of the longest – not to mention most-deserved – reputations of any in their region. All this having been noted, 2009 was a challenge even here: sometimes well-met, but seldom entirely surmounted. Rieslings were being harvested as early as mid-September, and Jean Dirler observes that had he cut back the crop on his Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer rather than allowing bunches to remain abundant, he would really have had a problem with sky-high potential alcohol. (For more on the Dirlers’ sites and methods, consult my reports on earlier vintages.)Importer: Robert Chadderdon Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 757-8185
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