Schoffit Pinot Gris Rangen Clos Saint Theobald, Alsace Grand Cru, France

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Harvested a week earlier than its higher-elevation new sibling Clos de la Ville Thann, Schoffit’s 2008 Pinot Gris Rangen de Thann Clos Saint Theobald features marginally lower alcohol and significantly less residual sugar, although – at 36 grams – it still tastes distinctly sweet. Smoked meat, sauteed mushroom, and ripe peach inform the nose and an oily-textured, expansive, yet vivaciously juicy palate, where they are joined by musk melon, toasted hazelnut, and hints of beat. This finishes with an abiding sense of richness as well as ample freshness, its sweetness well-integrated, and although not hugely complex today I can easily envision greater intrigue emerging over the next 10-12 years as the sense of sweetness backs-off a bit and secondary aromas accumulate. Bernard Schoffit now prefers to sin on the side of earlier harvest rather than later as had been his practice until half a dozen years ago, and this change could not have been more dramatically illustrated than by the early-September commencement of his 2009 harvest – although, he did not, admittedly, finish until mid-October. (For more about the motivations behind his altered strategy, see my account in issue 188.) “It was an especially difficult vintage for my top sites,” he opines, but in truth the difficulties went further, as some of Schoffit’s bottlings from the Harth suburb of Colmar seemed ripe almost to a fault, while one of the Rieslings proved decidedly lean. But another factor came into play: since he has begun waiting patiently for more of his wines to ferment drier, Schoffit has found that they often kick into malo-lactic transformation, which, unsurprisingly, can strongly influence a wine’s profile and more or less beneficial depending on vintage and individual cuvee. The 2008 harvest represented different challenges, with the crop around Colmar being large but the wines needing to be picked lest they succumb to rot, which Schoffit said came swiftly and where it hit reduced yields by half almost overnight. Schoffit blended-away his Sommerberg Riesling, stuck as it was with what he considered an “atypical” 30 grams of residual sugar; but grapes in the Rangen ripened successfully and botrytis there was of the noble sort. (I missed out on tasting the basic Sylvaner and Harth Rieslings of 2008, incidentally, which had been sold-out at the winery without remainder by the time that I visited last November.) Importer: Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800