2010 Domaine Albert Boxler Sylvaner

Bright and sappy, its crisp pear and fresh spinach drizzled with lime and salt, the Boxler 2010 Sylvaner reminds me of successful wines I tasted from this variety back in a day when it could at least occasionally hang long and still exhibit high acidity and extract. (Even more, this has me imagining how still-lively, gripping Sylvaner from a half century or more ago - such as a superb 1952 Willm Clos Gaensbroennel that I enjoyed when we both turned 60 - might have tasted in its youth.) The nuttiness and positive, piquant, vegetal notes of dark leafy greens persists along with the tart, crisp edge of pear fruit and the mouthwatering tang of salt-tinged lime into a downright exhilarating finish. The spare brightness on exhibit here, will no doubt appeal less to some tasters than it does to this one, or to the wine's author. "This is at the level of a Grand Cru," opines Jean Boxler, and I am not going to contradict that assessment. Please plan on following some of this exceptional value at table through at least 2025! "The problem in France," Boxler continues, "is that when people see the name 'Sylvaner' on the label they go "ugh!" but if you forced them to taste the wine blind, they would get excited." The problem outside of France or German-speaking territories, I tell him, is that people see that name and go "huh?" "I picked all of my grand cru Riesling at the beginning of the 2011 harvest," relates Jean Boxler, "because it was already ripe and I did not want to lose purity or acidity, or to gain alcohol, and I wanted to make the wines as dry as reasonably possible. Normally, letting Riesling hang longer is the right thing, but not in this vintage, as what little I picked later demonstrated. Especially in granite soils, maturation was very rapid. In 2010, by contrast, I picked as late as I possibly could and performed no deacidification. The quality of the acids just kept improving and my foliage was still green through October." Muscat in 2011, incidentally, Boxler says of a grape with which his estate often scores memorably, "got Oechsle but simply lacked fruit," and he blended it away. Like me, Boxler deems his 2010s to be in a different class than his 2011s. "Maybe 2010 will be a bit difficult in its youth for some consumers to appreciate, but for the professional ..." he utters a sigh indicating rapture, and after tasting his collection I know what he meant! While hectoliter per hectare yields in 2010 averaged only in the low twenties, Boxler held onto the reserves he had set aside for the U.S., even as he elected to change importers, so that both his 2010s and his 2011s were shipped after the middle of 2013. Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 524-1524