2010 Riesling Muenchberg

Meaty and musky scents and flavors dominate Ostertag's 2010 Riesling Muenchberg to the extent that I might, tasted blind, have guessed it to be a Pinot Gris with vintage-typically high acidity for that cépage. Vibrant and tingling, it also displays flattering richness of texture thanks to high glycerol and seemingly palpable extract. Passion fruit and peach are mingled in the mouthwatering, clear, juicy finish with urchin roe and capped by a musky sizzle of rose radish and eye-opening bite of lemon zest. This is like a tonic to one's system and keeps compelling the next sip. Plan to follow it through at least 2022. André Ostertag emphasizes the irresistibility and generosity of 2011 but in the case of his collection that's not the half of it, as we have here some of the most consistently pure and dynamically complex wines of his career, and also such high-points for this vintage Alsace-wide. "While I'm convinced you need to pick Pinot Gris early," he says, in contemplating a group of pristine and vivaciously expressive 2011s from this grape that harbor not a bit of funk or fungus, "with Riesling you have to wait, even in a vintage like 2011. You need to have cold nights to fix the aromas" he maintains, echoing a view expressed by some of his most illustrious German colleagues, first and foremost Klaus Peter Keller. "If you have cold nights already in September," he continues, "maybe you can do it but otherwise you have to wait. That's if you have the choice; and most of the time in Alsace you have the choice. I don't know why this is" - whether it's some triggering mechanism in the plant or some direct effect on the berry skins - "but it's something I discovered already in 1985, which was the first vintage where I picked everything Riesling two weeks later. Even in 2003, we picked Pinot Gris at the end of August, and Riesling at the beginning of October." This strategy certainly paid off for him in the present instance. (And, incidentally, it's the reason, says Ostertag, why he always presents Pinot Gris before Riesling in tasting his line-up, emphasizing freshness in the former and phenolic profundity in the latter.) Like many of his neighbors, Ostertag's strongest memory of vintage 2010 may well be its sheer paucity of juice (the principle reason also why I missed out on tasting several wines from that collection, which were sold out early without remainder), but his results are only slightly less impressive than those in 2011. "It was the coolest vintage so far of the new century," he notes, adding that "even Pinot Gris we did not start picking until the eighth of October." And in keeping with his earlier observations about early Pinot Gris harvest, those 2010s are significantly higher in alcohol and lack the clarity of their 2011 counterparts, something of a role-reversal in comparison to results with this grape at most other Alsace estates. Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 524-1524