Black raspberry and cassis tinged with nutmeg and cinnamon scent and saturate the silken palate of Barmes-Buecher’s 2008 Pinot Noir Vieilles Vignes, based on fruit from the Hengst matured in new barrique. Peat-like smokiness; tartness of berry skin; piquancy of cherry pit; and a saliva-stimulating salinity all render this quite invigorating. The newness of wood is surprisingly sublimated flavor-wise, but there is a bit of extraneous tannin and drying tendency on the finish that I attribute to the barrel having scavenged primary fruit juiciness. As with quite a few ambitious and by no means unsuccessful Alsace Pinot Noirs, the question I ask myself (and urge you to ponder) is whether despite – or perhaps I should say “on account of”? – the structure imparted by extended maceration and barrel-aging, it might not be best to consume this over the next 2-3 years because the fruit has been rendered too fragile and too muted to stand up to longer aging? My experience with older Pinots of this sort from less-ripe vintages is limited but to its extent decidedly mixed and frequently disappointing. As Francois Barmes was in the U.S. presenting his wines all the time that I was in Alsace last November, I tasted with his wife Genevieve and (for the first time in serious conversation with) his son Maxime, who clearly has the sharp wits and experimental spirit to harness his youthful enthusiasm. (I did not, however, ask him to play devil’s advocate in the case for biodynamics, which is by now a well-established practice at this address! For more on Barmes’ methodology, consult my report in issue 188.) Most of the 2009 Rieslings were almost shockingly low in acidity, but whether or not and if so to what degree they were thereby handicapped varied depending on the individual cuvee. Overall, Barmes’ approach to this vintage seems to have been to avoid problems from rapidly-ascending sugar and low acidity by picking relatively early, even if at the price of capturing only modestly ripe flavors. The array of 2009s I have reviewed is somewhat abbreviated, first on account of decisions the domaine made to conflate or omit the bottling of certain cuvees; secondly because a couple of Pinot Gris were still fermenting when I visited last November; and thirdly since from among a trio of whites still in tank awaiting sulfuring and bottling – testimony to the anomalously and inexplicably slow evolution of 2009s at this address – only one was in condition amenable to assessment. The 2008 collection is, thankfully, much more typically excellent.Importer: Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also, a Thomas Calder Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011-33-1-46-45-15-29
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