2011 Riesling Grossi Laue

Full bottle 1,266 g. Jean-Frédéric Hugel says, ‘Don’t worry too much about the pronunciation. We do that on purpose. We love unpronounceable names.’ This is two steps up in quality compared with the Classic we just tasted, he explains. A 100% terroir wine, from a selection of the finest plots of the grand cru Schoenenbourg – keuper, marl, dolomite and gypsum, overlaid with fine layers of quaternary siliceous gravel, Vosges sandstone and muschelkalk, with at its eastern extremity outcrops of Lias marl limestones. This terroir, J-F Hugel explains, ‘grew my family’ and ‘made the reputation, wealth and fame of the town for centuries. This was the number one objective we settled there.’ They did a parcel-by-parcel vinification of 12 different lots and then selected about three of those. ‘We do not overcomplicate things in terms of vinification. Everything at Hugel is picked by hand and we basically do the same things for all the wines – the main difference is in the tiny details. This one comes in later, so we take our time. A much longer sequential process. We crush over four hours; we are not afraid of phenolic extraction. We believe that bitterness and nuances of bitterness give more character to the wine than anything else. Then three to five months on fine lees. We’ve noticed that an extension of lees contact is extremely beneficial, especially now with climate change.’ Rich, brûléed spread of fruit. This unfolds old-gold, burning wick leaning into beeswax candle, honeysuckle pressed into coddled cream, full but not fat. I shamelessly steal Ted Hughes’ words, from his poem That Morning : ‘Solemn to stand there in the pollen light … Separated, golden and imperishable … So we found the end of our journey / So we stood, alive in the river of light, / Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.’ My apologies, Mr Hughes, for crudely chopping lines from your poem. But this wine demanded it, and I hope, after a glass of it, I may have been able to talk your indignation down. (TC)