The Blanck 2006 Pinot Gris Patergarten – which was only released last year – leads with fungal and alkaline notes that are not terribly encouraging, but in the mouth it blossoms to reveal ripe peach, high glycerin, veal stock, and toasted almond, all nicely complimented by the wine’s creaminess of texture. This polished performance finishes entirely dry yet succulently, reinforced by glycerin and sheer “extract-sweetness.” This will be a lovely, versatile Pinot Gris for enjoying over the next 2-3 years. Frederic and Philippe Blanck are among the wine world’s – hardly just Alsace’s or France’s – truly late-releasers, and Philippe opines that their 2007s – which he compares with the 2001s – will need especially long to show their best. That noted, I found the wines highly expressive at age one year, and the domaine did a more than credible job of 2006, too. Perhaps a bit paradoxically in light of their pleas for cellar maturation, the Blancks are moving increasingly toward the use of screwcap closure, and Philippe Blanck says that when he goes back and tastes the first wines he bottled this way – from vintages 2001 and 2002 – he is delighted with their evolution, or perhaps, in fact, their freshness and relative lack of evolution. (For an isolated comparison under cork and screwcap, see my tasting note on the Blancks’ 2006 Schlossberg Riesling.) This is one of several addresses where a tendency to revert to drier bottlings can be observed, for more about which consult my tasting notes on the Blancks’ 2007 Pinot Gris and on their 2006 and 2007 Gewurztraminer crus. Note that I was not able to taste the entire Blanck line-up from either of the vintages under consideration. In particular, there were two 2007 V.T.s I missed through an unfortunate accident in which dozens of fruit flies met their end inside the previously opened bottles before they reached me!Imported by: Michael Skurnik Wines, Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300 and by The Stacole Company, Boca Raton, FL; tel. (561) 998 0029