2008 Pinot Gris Jubilee

Hugel’s 2008 Pinot Gris Jubilee displays a musky, animal aromatic dimension the likes of which one would otherwise expect to find only in s Pinot Noir. A suggestion of almond cream is richly alluring. At the same time, though, fresh lime, orange, and peach lend a vivacity and refreshment worthy of Riesling, almost explosively intense and irresistibly succulent. This left me salivating uncontrollably. For years, this bottling represented almost exclusively fruit from the Sporen cru, but in the present instance, maturing vines in the Rosenberg have supplied 70% of the material, while the majority of Sporen fruit that was not incorporated here ended up as a Vendange Tardive bottling. As is usual for Pinot Gris at this address in recent years, 20-25% of the wine was matured in older barrique. There are around 7,000 bottles of this terrific cuvee, whose contents will be worth following for at least 15 years. Average must weights in 2009 were the highest in Hugel’s history, but as in so many instances, the vintage disappoints a bit in the bottle, although there are several rare, memorable, and for 2009 unusual nobly sweet wines in the collection. Marc Hugel put most of his 2008s through malo-lactic fermentation to take the edge off of their high acidity, and the results are seldom in any way inharmonious or diminished in refreshment and vivacity. He dealt with similarly high acidity, notes Hugel, in 1992. But that was on account of high yields rather than aberrantly cool weather, and the way in which those wines underwent malo was radically different. “In 2007 and now 2008,” Hugel explains, “we have gotten malo-lactic fermentation to take place in the midst of alcoholic fermentation. In all the oenological textbooks of the last 50 years, it’s written that if this happens you’ll get volatile acidity. But in fact, there is a way to avoid this, although you have to be extremely watchful and extremely precise about when you inoculate with malo-lactic bacteria, which we do around one-third of the way through the alcoholic fermentation. And if you have malo-lactic going on during the primary fermentation, then the diacetyl is metabolized along with the malic acid” guaranteeing that there will be no awkwardly buttery characteristic of the sort otherwise often associated with this transformation. Hugel went so far as to call the effect of this approach “revolutionary.” Certainly the wines, taken as a group, are impressive; though the nobly sweet among them won’t show their true meddle for many years. (Lest there be any doubt, the V.T. and S.G.N. bottlings of 2008 did not undergo malo.) Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700