Fascinating flinty flavors along with bright fruit aromas on the nose lead the 2015 Muscat Grand Cru Saering to a complex and salty, lovely piquant and well-structured palate with a piquant acidity. The 2015 is based on Ottonel and Muscat d'Alsace. whose percentage is higher than in the two former vintages since there were no problems with fruit fly in this year. The wine is bone dry (less than one gram of residual sugar), but full-bodied and intense, with a good mineral character.

The 2014 Muscat Grand Cru Saering is predominantly based on Muscat Ottonel (95%), since the fruit fly drosophila suzukii affected the Muscat d'Alsace heavily in 2014. The wine is clear and fresh on the nose, aromatic but also deep and stony, with discreet lemon and stony flavors. Full-bodied, pure and very elegant on the palate, this is a dense and rich, but very well balanced and finesse-full Saering with a lovely, aromatic, well-structured and mineral finish.

The 2013 Muscat Grand Cru Saering is made from 97% of Muscat Ottonel and only 3% of Muscat d'Alsace because the latter was not ripe enough due to a first attack of drosophila suzukii which should come back even more effecting in 2014. The 2013 Saering is very aromatic in its intense grape flavor on the nose which is followed by a round and juicy, very intense and powerful but well-structured, dry and mineral palate. The finish is salty, tension-filled and long.

Featuring a surprisingly high quotient of traditional Alsace Muscat due to the poor flowering of Ottonel in this vintage, the Dirler 2008 Muscat d’Alsace Saering smells pungently of wintergreen, rosemary, boxwood, and elderflower. Wafting and liquid floral essences of orange blossom and elder as well as herbal pungency persist on a juicy, invigorating, yet implausibly satiny, lees-enriched palate. This boasts palpable extract allied to levity and refreshment, with the addition of mouthwatering salinity clinching one’s compulsion to take the next sip. Why not just call it “Cuvee Pavlov”? Play around with this at table over the next few years – or, for that matter, the next ten or a dozen years – and you will have some gustatory revelations. As usual chez Dirler, I was forced during my most recent visit to take a slightly abbreviated tour of the two most recent collections on account of this family’s sheer multitude of bottlings, but it is clear from their 2008s that this remains one of the most frequently exciting – and generally consistent – sources of wine in Alsace, making it unfortunate that one doesn’t see Dirler-Cade wines more often in the U.S. Moreover, this is an estate that’s rendering highly distinctive; often deliciously unorthodox; but never fashion-pandering innovations while retaining a clear and constant vision of how the classic cepages of Alsace should perform in sites that can boast some of the longest – not to mention most-deserved – reputations of any in their region. All this having been noted, 2009 was a challenge even here: sometimes well-met, but seldom entirely surmounted. Rieslings were being harvested as early as mid-September, and Jean Dirler observes that had he cut back the crop on his Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer rather than allowing bunches to remain abundant, he would really have had a problem with sky-high potential alcohol. (For more on the Dirlers’ sites and methods, consult my reports on earlier vintages.)Importer: Robert Chadderdon Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 757-8185