This bottle of Pinot Gris from Alsace is a personal import by friends of the family of the vigneron, a memorable wine that is a rare pleasure and which is impossible to buy in a shop. My friend for lunch has met four generations of the winemakers and stayed many times in the hotel near the vines. Note the tall shape and brown glass style of the bottle, which is mandated for the Alsace appellation. The Rhineland wine-glasses are my own.
I prepared a light salad in the style of Provence (paté, ham and saucisson with goat’s cheese and freshly-cracked walnuts) for our first lunchtime catch-up for many years. We’ve kept in touch with e-mails etc but it’s still true there is so much you can’t write and which can only be said face-to-face.
Hunawihr is a pretty town in with many half-timbered facades, the centre of wine production in Alsace in France.
Tasting notes:
David Ermel - Réserve Partivculière (2017) - AOC Alsace (Hunawihr, France)
Long cork, which pulled cleanly.
Golden colour, tasting of almonds, honey and slightly vanilla.
Smooth on tongue. Fairly sweet almost mead. Rounded, no acidity at all.
Fragrant with hints of a meadow in summer.
Long after-taste lingering like fine honey.
I didn’t note this wine (aged from 2017) as biscuity or buttery, which is the classic note for what would formerly have been called Tokay d’Alsace. But today’s wine was difficult to pin down to one of the usual analytic flavours. A broad taste and pleasant swig would be another way of describing it. A higher alcohol content than an equivalent German wine from the other side of the Rhine.
Thanks to Alan for contributing such an interesting wine