The Vinorati Blog

The weeks somehow sneakily slipped past me and I woke up during the night last night to realize that June 1st is the very first Ibero-Americano tasting hosted by Joan Gòmez Pallarès of DE VINIS CIBISQVE. The theme that Joan chose for this first Spanish-language blogosphere tasting was single varietal wines from your local region. The theme is in an attempt to get a clear expression of the “terroir” where the grape is grown. I had been keeping my eye out for some mono-varietal AOC Bordeaux wines in the past 3 weeks but never did manage to hunt one down. Fortunately today finds me in Alsace, one of the areas in France that is very well-known for it’s varietal wines such as Gewurtztraminer, Riesling and Pinot gris. So I decided to cheat to win - I could participate in Joan’s tasting and have an excuse to buy a nice Alsatian Riesling! A very helpful salesman in a wine cave in Strasbourg pointed me towards a 1999 Josmeyer “Les Pierrets” Riesling and said that it was currently drinking very nicely. The choice was tough between that and a half-bottle of Weinbach Riesling, but since I just recently tasted a couple of Weinbach wines (very very nice) and we are going to visit Josmeyer in the morning I picked the Josmeyer.

Unfortunately the circumstances for my impromptu wine tasting were less than auspicious. I arrived late at my hotel, and after a classic Alsatian lunch I was not in the mood for a heavy dinner. Off to the grocery store for picnic supplies. Below you can see my Ibis picnic. It actually was quite nice, and beats the hell out of a meal at the Buffalo Grill next door.

My tasting notes for the 1999 Josmeyer “Les Pierrets” Riesling
Classic musky tropical fruit and kerosene aromas leap out of the bottle as soon as the cork is pulled, the scents flow into lemon-lime-citrus in the glass. The lemon-lime theme is found again in the attack with great bracing mineral acidity that holds steady right through to the finish. Little musky floral chacter in the mid-palate and a nice crisp clean dry finish with a little lingering lime. Seems like it would be a great food wine. Went very well with my 24-month Comte and crackers(!)

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 11:02 pm and is filed under tasting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.