2010 Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Riesling Brand Vieilles Vignes Grand Cru

Combining fruit from the Steinglitz and core Brand with a majority from the relatively deeper-soiled Schneckenberg portion of this grand cru, Zind-Humbrecht’s 2010 Riesling Brand Vieilles Vignes retains unusually high acidity even by vintage standards and was very slow to ferment leaving behind 34 grams of residual sugar at 12.9% alcohol, features that no doubt owe much to the influence of botrytis, even though the most significantly affected bunches were culled to generate a V.T. bottling. (That virtually all of the vines were to some degree affected explains the absence of a corresponding non-Vieilles Vignes bottling, since the estate has trained its customers to associate obvious absence or presence of both sweetness and noble rot with the distinction between regular and Vieilles Vignes brand bottlings.) Rowan, honeysuckle, mint, maraschino, almond extract, apricot preserves and candied lime peel combine for a headily alluring, high-toned aroma and reemerge on a luscious and creamy yet simultaneously bright, juicy palate, frangipane and marzipan being reinforced in a long, vibrant finish by the wine’s overt sweetness, yet harmoniously marrying with fresh fruit as well as liquid floral flavors and in no way engendering a confectionary overall impression. This will merit restraint as it develops further interest in bottle and should reward return visits through at least 2035. ”The trap into which many growers fell,” opines Olivier Humbrecht, “was to pick 2010 too early and 2011 too late. In 2010 you had to wait for the acidity – especially the malic acid – to drop; whereas in 2011 you had a battle to keep potential alcohol from getting too high and the acidity too low. That situation made 2011 a record-breaking year for production of V.T. in Alsace, though not,” he adds with a smile, “at Zind-Humbrecht.” Having said the 2010 crop needed time to ripen, Humbrecht admits to some surprise at the fact that his harvest was finished already (with the Rangen vineyards), on October 18, earlier, as well as at higher must weights, than he had anticipated when he began strategizing and picking. But then, yields were miniscule even by region-wide 2010 standards (with Gewurztraminer decimated by hail on top of poor flowering); and like most practitioners of biodynamics, Humbrecht believes his viticultural regimen is conducive to promoting ripe flavors earlier in any given season. The fact that total pH levels in his 2010 vintage Rieslings remain so low even after most of them (like their 2011 counterparts) underwent malolactic transformation, is certainly proof that when Humbrecht picked, tartaric acidity far outweighed malic (green apple) acidity, in contrast with the situation that prevailed this vintage in most of the Rhine basin, French or German. Being on the whole slow to ferment even by this estate’s laissez-faire standards, Zind-Humbrecht’s 2010s benefited from the buffering of extended lees contact and very few were bottled before the following August, at which point the precocious 2011 harvest intervened. From that latter vintage, even much of the estate’s Riesling was picked by the third week of September, but Humbrecht reports that heat during harvest was not the problem that it had been in 2009. In addition, alcohol levels for Riesling cracked 14% only in Brand and Rangen (levels that – like those of his other 2011 Rieslings – Humbrecht underestimated when showing them to me from cask; and no wonder, because most of these wines manage to seem quite buoyant). Pinot Gris from 2011 was a different matter, with several bottlings – not for the first time – being vitiated by alcohol well in excess of 15%. Better perhaps, to have adopted the same attitude Humbrecht expressed that year toward Gewurztraminer: “to have tried to get balanced dry wines would in most cases have meant harvesting without physiological ripeness.” A welcome feature for many of us as Rieslings from both the 2010 and 2011 collections at this address will be their having with few exceptions fermented to analytical dryness, though the former often border on severity and will need time in bottle. The Humbrechts have recently found themselves in a ludicrous position. Unless a quorum of bottling growers can be found to collaborate on the establishment of a so-called cru communale (which commits those producers to 10% crop reduction and certain minimum prices) then a commune’s name is no longer authorized as the name of a wine. Neither Gueberschwihr nor Wintzenheim – the Humbrechts’ and Zinds’ ancestral villages – can muster such a quorum, so fantasy names have to be created to replace those village names if the same fruit as in past years is to be subjected to separate bottling. Imported by Kobrand, Inc., New York, NY; tel. (212) 490-9300