Tempe had still not bottled two S.G.N.s from 2002 – a year of outstanding botrytis, he opines – and while his Pinot Gris from the Schoenbourg was swamped by the flavors of the new barrel in which it had spent its young life, the 2002 Gewurztraminer Mambourg S Selection de Grains Nobles (from old vines in the Steinigerweg section) was another matter. Honey, peach nectar, white raisin, rose perfume, and brown spices in the nose lead to an eszencia-like palate of striking viscosity and peachy intensity, wrapped in caramel trappings from – but not upstaged by – its barrique. It finishes with ethereal elegance yet superb concentration, its sweetness framed by the wood notes and checked by ample (if not at all overt) acidity and (quite overt!) extract.I found no group of wines I tasted this year in Alsace more challenging to assess than those of vinous adventurer Marc Tempe, whom some critics call an iconoclast and others a reactionary. He bottled his first wines in 1995, and has been working biodynamically for a decade. These wines ferment longer (without cultured yeast additions – Tempe’s aim is to “work as naturally as possible”) and reside in fuder or barriques longer (generally 2-3 years) than any others I know of in Alsace today. Malolactic fermentation generally takes place, although Tempe doesn’t force it, and as he hastens to point out, he works at yield and ripeness levels that have in recent years proved pretty inhospitable to malic acid! Tempe likes botrytis for the complexity it adds even in dry wines. Add to all of the above considerations a penchant for minimal if any doses of sulfur and you often have wines that – while in some sense “slow moving” – are not easy targets to capture in a momentary tasting note. I have therefore only published notes or scores on wines whose personalities I felt capable of grasping on the occasion of my visit, which naturally also meant wines far enough along in fermentation than were many of his 2005s.Importer: Vintage 59 Imports, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 966 9218.
粵公網安備 44030502006249號