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

Schoffit’s 2007 Pinot Gris Rangen de Thann Clos Saint Theobald Schistes is a representative of his wines in a new, drier style (“Schiste” serving to mark this in the way “Graves” does for his generic wines). You might question Schoffit’s judgment if 16.53% alcohol (and you’d better believe I looked that up to the hundredth-place to be sure!) was the price for this new style, especially since the wine still ended up with 20 grams of residual sugar. But you’d be wrong: the balance of this wine is as incredible, as is its having been picked already in the third week of September, more than two weeks ahead of the Rangen’s crop of Riesling. Peach, banana, and peat make for a smoky as well as sweetly-suggestive nose. Caramel, hazelnut and almond paste richness and creaminess on a voluminous palate here remind me of this year’s Gewurz Rangen V.T. (and when I went back and forth, this wine still tasted well-balanced alongside!). Toasted nuts, crushed stones, and peat inform a finish that amazingly is barely off-dry, heat free, and sets me salivating in search of the next sip. This might well be remarkably long-lived, too. Then again, its alcohol might catch up with it. All I can say is, you need to buy some and we’ll all have that voyage of discovery along with Schoffit. Bernard Schoffit has made a major change in his line-up with the 2007 vintage, introducing (or, from a long-term perspective, re-introducing) higher-acid, truly dry basic bottlings, although these will generally still undergo malo-lactic transformation. He says this approach is directed at export because his French customers are used to sweetness, and we will continue in parallel to feature bottlings of the opulent, off-dry sort for which he gained a reputation already in the late 1980s, well before taste-able residual sugar began flourishing region-wide and “dry” ceased to be the default position for Alsace wine. Schoffit is keenly aware of the need to work with his vines in order to achieve ripe flavors at lower sugar and higher acid levels, since simply picking earlier – although he is doing that – is not in itself sufficient for successfully achieving an alternate balance. “The great challenge nowadays,” he had already admitted to me in the spring of 2007, “is to find the right balance among alcohol, residual sugar, and acidity.” Schoffit opined that the healthy fruit of 2007 was less conducive to sweet wines than normal, then staged an amazing performance that seemed flatly to contradict that assertion. Admittedly his 2007 offerings are slightly less extravagant in number than in many other recent years, though nowhere near as drastically trimmed as in 2006. In that vintage, Schoffit didn’t just sell off fruit and declassify cru material that had already been harvested at pitiable yields, he also dispensed with his regular “Tradition” cuvees of Sylvaner and Riesling, since his lower-elevation and always earlier-ripening sites around Colmar that source those bottlings were especially susceptible to rot.Importer: Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800

Schoffit’s “normal” bottling from this site and grape, his 2007 Pinot Gris Rangen de Thann Clos Saint Theobald features 14% alcohol and 50 grams of residual sugar, for a rich, full-bodied, yet overtly sweet performance that is significantly marked by its malo-lactic transformation, leading to a vivid creaminess both in texture and in a dairy-flavored sense. Banana oil, candied citrus rind, and honey on the nose and some of the same confectionary nut paste and caramel notes on the palate that were observed in this year’s Gewurz VT and Pinot Gris Schiste Rangen bottlings render this rather dessert wine-like in lieu of offsetting elements, but we certainly have seamless richness here and the smoky typicity of the site comes out in the finish. If this outgrows its awkwardly milky note, it certainly has the potential to evolve nicely over the next 12-15 years, though whether it will become significantly more complex I shall not hazard a guess. Bernard Schoffit has made a major change in his line-up with the 2007 vintage, introducing (or, from a long-term perspective, re-introducing) higher-acid, truly dry basic bottlings, although these will generally still undergo malo-lactic transformation. He says this approach is directed at export because his French customers are used to sweetness, and we will continue in parallel to feature bottlings of the opulent, off-dry sort for which he gained a reputation already in the late 1980s, well before taste-able residual sugar began flourishing region-wide and “dry” ceased to be the default position for Alsace wine. Schoffit is keenly aware of the need to work with his vines in order to achieve ripe flavors at lower sugar and higher acid levels, since simply picking earlier – although he is doing that – is not in itself sufficient for successfully achieving an alternate balance. “The great challenge nowadays,” he had already admitted to me in the spring of 2007, “is to find the right balance among alcohol, residual sugar, and acidity.” Schoffit opined that the healthy fruit of 2007 was less conducive to sweet wines than normal, then staged an amazing performance that seemed flatly to contradict that assertion. Admittedly his 2007 offerings are slightly less extravagant in number than in many other recent years, though nowhere near as drastically trimmed as in 2006. In that vintage, Schoffit didn’t just sell off fruit and declassify cru material that had already been harvested at pitiable yields, he also dispensed with his regular “Tradition” cuvees of Sylvaner and Riesling, since his lower-elevation and always earlier-ripening sites around Colmar that source those bottlings were especially susceptible to rot.Importer: Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800