Zind-Humbrecht | Alsace | Pinot Gris Heimbourg, Sélection de Grains Nobles | 2008 | 750ml | bio

Beschreibung

Product description for Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris Heimbourg, Sélection de Grains Nobles 2008 (bio)

Wine Information

The Pinot Gris at Heimbourg is planted at the very top of this small single vineyard in Turckheim (only 9 hectares in total, of which Zind-Humbrecht owns 4.5 hectares). The upper part of the vineyard is quite steep, and years of erosion have left little topsoil and a lot of limestone. Furthermore, the vineyard is quite exposed to the winds. These are perfect conditions for late ripening and keeping the grapes healthy late in the season, so there’s no rush to harvest them early. These are also difficult growing conditions for the delicate Riesling grape or Gewürztraminer, which thrive in more sheltered and warmer locations, which explains the choice of Pinot Gris in this area. As in the Rotenberg, a selection of healthy grapes was harvested to produce a drier wine. Ten days later, the remaining botrytis-affected grapes were harvested. They exhibit high acidity and distinct sweetness.

Colour

Amber.

Nose

The 2008 Heimbourg Pinot Gris Selection de Grains Nobles captivates with its intense and compact aroma, featuring spices of walnuts, galangal, and roasted almonds, along with opulent fruit and sweetness. Bitter orange jam, candied orange peel, dried mango, fresh ginger, and ripe vineyard peach all dance the round. A crystal-clear and beautifully concentrated, noble-sweet treasure awaits us.

Palate

On the tongue, the intense sweetness, spice, and fruit are paired with invigorating acidity and salty minerality that are second to none. A noble sweet wine that shines with freshness and elegance, a true masterpiece from the house of Zind-Humbrecht. A wine made for decades with fantastic aging potential.

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Wine Advocate

Score: 93

The Zind-Humbrecht 2008 Pinot Gris Heimbourg Selection de Grains Nobles smells prominently of white truffle and sauteed champignons, along with maraschino, white raisin, quince preserves, and decadent lily perfume. Given 224 grams of residual sugar, even with yet-higher acidity than the corresponding Rotenberg, this comes off as enormously sweet. Here is an instance where Olivier Humbrecht thinks precisely a high acid and correspondingly low pH medium inhibited the yeasts in their labors, resulting in a protracted fermentation that petered-out at only 9.7% alcohol. One experiences that sense of confiture and honey being laced with enlivening fresh lemon, and even if one wants to characterize the finish as sweet-sour, it is undeniably intense, prolonged, and full of potentially productive, latently energetic tension. This needs a decade, I suspect, just to settle into a groove, and ought to be worth following for more than another decade beyond that, though I would monitor the extent to which the overtly fungal notes integrate or strengthen. _x000D_
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Tasting the Zind-Humbrecht collections armed with what one knows of these vintages from most other establishments, both the 2008s and 2009s will harbor surprises. A number of 2008s are ornery in finished acidity, and some are more marked by botrytis than most other exemplars of their vintage from top addresses, this occasionally taking the form of fungal notes and piquancy that some tasters may find off-putting. The 2008 harvest began here already on September 23, lasting exactly one month. Selectivity in October – especially with Pinot Gris – consisted, explained Humbrecht, more in the careful removal of healthy bunches to insure some dry wines, with the remaining crop being left until later, the opposite of what more usually happens and at many other top-quality Alsace (or German) estates – notwithstanding the literal meaning of the expression “vendange tardive.” “Gewurztraminer was the last to ripen,” notes Humbrecht, and presumably for that reason grape sugars were very high by the time he picked, making for a collection nearly all of which exhibits V.T.-like sweetness. “It was almost easier and more sensible to make S.G.N. this vintage than V.T.,” remarks Humbrecht by way of explaining why he rendered six of the former and only one 2008 wine in the latter category. “If there had been pressure to harvest,” he notes, “then we would have had V.T.s instead.” The majority of 2008 Rieslings – as well as the Pinot Blanc and two Muscats – were not bottled until February, 2010 on account of their high acidity and/or sluggish fermentations. But most of those wines underwent malo and finished dry or virtually so. (The yeasts and beneficial bacteria may have found it tough working in such a low pH medium, but – eventually – they succeeded.) Yet even in early-harvested instances, Humbrecht says that the proportion of malic acidity – which thereafter diminished – was never higher than one-third. Most of the 2008 vintage Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer, even including the S.G.N.s, were bottled already in September, 2009._x000D_
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The surprise on tasting the Zind-Humbrecht 2009s is an entirely pleasant one. The exceptional expressiveness of so many of these wines – even if Olivier Humbrecht admits that “they aren’t always perfectly precise or pure” – is surely in large part a tribute to vineyard management that permitted such a substantial portion of so large a crop to be picked unusually early, yet expressively ripe, although, a few sites succumbed to fortunately noble rot. Among practices to which Humbrecht points as relevant to his 2009 quality is his elimination in recent years of vine hedging to achieve earlier and more uniform flavor ripeness without excess grape sugar. Instead, his crew now lets the tips grow and then laboriously ties or tucks them back into the canopy, an approach for which fellow-proponent of biodynamics Lalou Bize-Leroy has become well-known. Against a background in vintage 2009 of wines that fermented rapidly for most growers, Humbrecht explains that this was the case for many of his, too; but some that had stopped with significant residual sugar over the winter began fermenting again in early summer of last year, a few not finishing until autumn and thus missing the main bottling session that takes place here each September. When I visited the domaine last November, Riesling Windsbuhl; multiple Rieslings from Turckheim including two Brands; and the Jebsal Pinot Gris S.G.N. were not ready to be assessed. Those who (like me) have harbored reservations about noticeably high alcohol in certain recent Zind-Humbrecht wines will be delighted to find 2009s that have in that respect also beaten the vintage odds, though to be sure, sometimes at the price of high residual sugar. With minor exceptions, retail prices have dropped for Zind-Humbrecht wines, in some instances significantly. Add to this an expanded range of generic cuvees and the Humbrechts’ willingness to declassify fruit from many outstanding sites (which helps account for the 2009 collection’s – relatively! – reduced number of bottlings), and most consumers can afford to enjoy – indeed, really have no excuse for remaining strangers to – at least some of these much-talked about and often iconic wines._x000D_
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Importer: The Sorting Table, Napa, CA; tel. (415) 491-4724
David Schildknecht

Vinous

Score: 98

(for 375 ml.; 9.7% alcohol, 224 g/l r.s. and 10.7 acidity) Medium gold. Utterly captivating nose melds bitter orange peel, apricot, wildflower honey and minerals. Thick, tactile and extremely young, with powerful acidity giving it a slightly disjointed character initially. For all its huge density, there’s great cut to the flavors of apricot, honey and flowers, with the wine’s powerful sweetness leavened by a savory element. Finishes with palate-staining fruit, outstanding energy and uncanny persistence. This came together brilliantly with aeration, maintaining great refinement and a sensation of weightlessness. Will go on for decades.
— Stephen Tanzer
Drinking window:
Review date: Nov 2010

Producer website: http://www.zindhumbrecht.fr/