2020 Pinot Gris Cuvee Ste Catherine
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Tasting notes
From the bottom of the Altenbourg's limestones, the 2020 Pinot Gris Cuvée Ste Catherine offers a clear and elegant, charmingly fruity and finely flinty bouquet of ripe seed fruits with chalky notes. Full-bodied, round and rich on the palate but with good lemon freshness and fine grip of tannins and phenols, this is a supple, intense and aromatic Pinot that was not fermented to bone dry but somewhere between dry and demi-sec. Bottled with six grams per liter of residual sugar and 14% stated alcohol.
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Jancis Robinson MW
Jancis Robinson MW
More reviews and scores
Stunning honeycomb aroma, but also a slew of stone fruit and delicate, exotic aromas fill out this very complex composition. Enormous concentration and quite some power, but not even the slightest hint of heaviness or opulence. The fine tannins and graceful acidity are the secret to this, yet they are never obvious, and even at the finish it remains very silky and super-fine. From biodynamically grown grapes. Drink or hold.
Full bottle 1,364 g. Certified organic and biodynamic 100% Pinot Gris grapes from the Fallers' monopole vineyard of the Clos des Capucins on sand silt soil on granite pebbles and the bottom of the Grand Cru Schlossberg on granite. RS 6.6 g/l, TA 5.7 g/l, pH 3.2. Aged for 10 months in large, old oak vats. 9,986 bottles produced. Really rather thrilling wine that finishes dry with great tension. Nose of smoked bacon and a finish not unlike that of the skin contact wines of Georgia that I have just been tasting. Crystalline fruit recalls fruits-confits and is clearly much richer and more powerful than the Freedom of the Press Essex Pinot Gris I have just been tasting. Great that this is not fat and lily and difficult to fit into a meal! Smoky nose and electric energy on the finish. (JR)