The Bott-Geyl 2009 Riesling Kronenbourg smells of ripe white peach and apple laced with smoky black tea, lime zest, and piquant peach kernel and apple pip. Unusually bright, firmly-textured, and straight for the vintage, it adds mouthwatering salinity to the aforementioned cast of characters in a persistently refreshing finish. I would expect this to perform well for at least half a dozen years, and probably longer. “For me it was not a classic year for V.T. or S.G.N.,” says Jean-Christophe Bott of 2009. “There was very little botrytis, and when we started picking it was with the aim to make the best possible normal range. I found most of the Gewurztraminer very aromatic and fruity, but soft and lacking the depth of their sites; too much on the varietal side, so I preferred to mostly declassify, and also because in 2008 we had a great vintage whose wines really taste of their sites.” My judgment on 2008 is qualified. Detached tartness and decidedly fungal overtones suggest that in some instances fruit had to be harvested lest it succumb to botrytis. A measure of that fungal advance is that the nobly sweet wines in the present collection are enormously high in sugar and quite strongly marked by botrytis, yet represent the product of picking entire blocks rather than bunch-selection.Various importers, including Beaune Imports, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 559 1040 and Winebow, Montvale, NJ; tel. (201) 445-0620

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From a site that is really an extension of Riquewihr’s great Schoenenbourg, Bott’s 2004 Riesling Kronenbourg features an oily texture, bright acids, chalky minerality, and the bitterness of peach kernel, although here there is more flesh of the peaches than in the Grafenreben. Some of the oily texture and faint bitterness is due to botrytis, and I wonder whether additional time in the bottle makes sense, or whether the botrytis will make inroads on what sappy fruit concentration is presently in the finish. Young Jean-Christophe Bott is passionate about quality and unafraid to make sacrifices on its behalf. He has adopted a biodynamic regimen in the vineyards and is now holding most of his wines 6-24 months in bottle before release. Clarity and cleanliness run through all of these, and it is encouraging to taste so many Riesling that are uncompromisingly dry (although occasionally bitterness or alcohol intrude). Bott feels capable of encouraging dryness and balance in various ways in the vineyard and the cellar without ever intervening in or attempting to re-start sluggish fermentations. By no means all of the wines I tasted displayed strong personalities, but many of them gave reason to believe – as does Bott’s articulate advocacy – that this will be one of the more talked-about Alsace domains of the coming decade. Given the challenges that so many of his fellow-growers recorded with this variety in 2004, his success in bringing Gewurztraminer to subtly-ennobled ripeness in that vintage – while taking advantage of higher than usual acidities – is especially noteworthy.Importer: Eric Solomon Selections, Charlotte, NC; tel. (704) 358-1565