Domaine Barmes-Buecher Pinot Noir Vieilles Vignes, Alsace, France

巴爾梅布徹老藤黑皮諾干紅葡萄酒

點(diǎn)擊次數(shù)：4462

From cask (100% new barrique), the Barmes-Buecher’s 2009 Pinot Noir Vieilles Vignes – sourced from the Hengst – brims with blackberry fruit tinged with brown spices, chalk dust, smoke and toast. Suggestions of leather rise on the silken palate. Like its 2008 counterpart, this is remarkably free of obvious flavors of new wood, but unlike that wine, this 2009 is persistently juicy all the way through an impressive finish that introduces a mouthwatering note of salted caramel. If one is going to experiment with holding some Alsace Pinot Noir for a decade, here is a fine candidate. 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