2008 Muscat Saering

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