Domaine Bott-Geyl Riesling Mandelberg, Alsace Grand Cru, France

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Bott’s Mandelberg vines were decimated by hail in 2007 and had not yet fully recovered from the shock, as a result of which, he explains, the very tiny crop that became his 2008 Riesling Mandelberg “had to be watched very carefully because it wanted to go from under-ripeness to botrytis and over-ripeness very quickly.” The resultant concentrate of Riesling has the oily texture, prickly spice, and exotic notes of pineapple, almond extract, and overripe apricot one might expect from a botrytis cuvee; but at only 28 grams of residual sugar and more than nine grams acidity, it is almost dry, as well as somewhat at sweet-tart war with itself, dynamic but at least for now inharmonious. Certainly it will serve for invigoration! If you like to play the odds, forget this for a few years and then start monitoring its evolution. After following Bott’s Mandelberg efforts since 2004, I must say I am simply skeptical about this site, which seems too often to display the proclivity he pointed to this year: One moment it’s skins are not quite ripe, even if sugars are high; the next, it’s under threat from rot. “For me it was not a classic year for V.T. or S.G.N.,” says Jean-Christophe Bott of 2009. “There was very little botrytis, and when we started picking it was with the aim to make the best possible normal range. I found most of the Gewurztraminer very aromatic and fruity, but soft and lacking the depth of their sites; too much on the varietal side, so I preferred to mostly declassify, and also because in 2008 we had a great vintage whose wines really taste of their sites.” My judgment on 2008 is qualified. Detached tartness and decidedly fungal overtones suggest that in some instances fruit had to be harvested lest it succumb to botrytis. A measure of that fungal advance is that the nobly sweet wines in the present collection are enormously high in sugar and quite strongly marked by botrytis, yet represent the product of picking entire blocks rather than bunch-selection.Various importers, including Beaune Imports, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 559 1040 and Winebow, Montvale, NJ; tel. (201) 445-0620