1993 Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Riesling Brand Grand Cru
Market price
Buying options
Tasting notes
RS 8 g/l, TA 6.5 g/l. Smells of oranges and tastes (wait for it …) of sardines! Which is weird, but equally weirdly, it's not horrible. Although the aromas keep changing and changing every time I lift the glass to my nose. It's so complex, shifting every second, aromas and flavours filling space between aromas and flavours. Frangipani notes, then jasmine. Salted oranges, pickled oranges. Satsuma and clementine peel. Chewy. Orange blossom. So alive; dancing! Is this really a 20-year-old wine?! It tases as if it might go on forever. A wine like this makes me want to go back and revise all my drinking windows for Brand Rieslings. These wines are quite sublime, two decades on. (TC)
Critic scores
Average Score
Robert Parker
Tamlyn Currin, jancisrobinson.com
More reviews and scores
As impressive as the Z-H Rieslings are, the two knock-out examples of the 1993 vintage are the Riesling Brand and Riesling Rangen Clos St. Urbain. The 1993 Riesling Brand is a stunning wine of extraordinary intensity and precision. Made from a hotter micro-climate from a vineyard planted in granite soil, it is a full-bodied, enormously rich, dry, intense Riesling that coats the palate but is never heavy or cloying. It is amazingly flexible with an assortment of foods, accompanying everything from spicy Asian cooking to the finest Japanese sushi. It should drink well for 10-15 years. When tasting through the Z-H portfolio, it is obvious that Riesling is one of the most favored varietals in the 1993 vintage. Yields were down significantly, resulting in dry, impressively-extracted Rieslings. The 1992 and 1993 wines reviewed in this issue are the wines of a genius. Importers: Wine Markets International, Inc., Woodbury, NY; tel. (516) 364-1850, and Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 525-1524
About the producer
Widely acknowledged as one of the legendary wineries in Alsace, the wines of Domaine Zind-Humbrecht are nothing short of magical. Certified organic and biodynamic, the estate crafts an extensive range of wines, including many Grand Cru and single-vineyard bottlings.