Domaines Schlumberger Grand Cru Kessler Gewurztraminer 2005 in Alsace France

Domaines Schlumberger Grand Cru Kessler Gewurztraminer 2005 is from a single Grand Cru vineyard in Guebwiller in Alsace which is in Eastern France near the border of Germany. This wine came from Slurp and cost £18.35 and as is more common in Alsace due to its weather ( warm autumns and low rainfall due to the vosges mountains) the vineyard is run biodynamically and Domaines Schlumberger is one of the largest vineayard owners  in Alsace. This wine has won awards and indeed in Decanter November 2009  it was a 5star Decanter Award Winner and also a silver award in the 100+ Alsace Grand Cru wines tested.

This wine has a characteristic deepish gold colour - the grape Gewurztraminer often has quite a deep gold colour. Floral, deeply perfumed aromas of elderflower and roses promise what is to come, aromatics  also include grape and lychee. Once tasted the aromas are carried through to the palate with additional white stone fruits, the acidity is no higher than medium, again normal for this grape variety, the alcohol is warming but balanced. The wine feels silky in the mouth and the length is good, spicy to the end with roses, citric waves and stone fruits layered and complex with a lovely bitter, dry finish.
This is a wine is full and lush with amazing vivacity considering its age - but the pedigree says it all.

Riesling Kappelweg Vendange Tardive 2000 by Rolly Gassmann

Riesling Kappelweg Vendange Tardive 2000 by Rolly Gassmann is supplied by The Wine Society priced at £35, it is a late harvest wine ( denoted by the Vendange Tardive) and can only be one of Alsace's 'nobel grape varieties' by their wine laws, these are Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris and Muscat. The grapes are only harvested when they have fully ripened and more - and have started to dehydrate and shrivel on the vines so concentrating the flavours within the grape and so in the resultant wine. The grape has a high percentage of sugar and so the wine is often sweet as it cannot convert all the contained sugar to alcohol because the yeast cannot operate effectively at high sugar concentrations. This whole process is called 'passerillage' and was first introduced in France by the Alsace region and was first described as Vendange Tardive by Hugel in 1976. There is another higher sugar concentrated wine called Selecion de Grains Nobles and this has to have been infected by Botrytis ( the same nobel rot that affects grapes used to make Sauternes in Bordeaux and Trockenbeerenauslese in Germany ). The basic rule declares what minimium sugar level is needed in the grapes at harvest to reach these 2 levels of sweetness, it is higher for Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris than for Riesling and Muscat.
This wine has more colour than most rieslings due to its increased age and also the concentration of flavours and sugars it contains, the legs are slow to form and then fat - this tells me that the wine has increased viscosity, due to either alchol or sugar. On the nose we are treated to aromas of baked apples and pears, yeasty tertiary notes and a little mushroom, it also has a streak of minerality running around it.
On the mouth - Wow, silky texture, great acidity balancing the succulent sweetness backed up by baked stone fruits, sugary apple, all concentrated and honeyed. The length is good and clean, with a baked apple finish, and yes there is minerality, great structure and lots of clever fruit sugars, but the acidity, the freshness of this wine comes through - and it is at this point 12 years old - beautiful!