Domaine Bott-Geyl Gewurztraminer Furstentum, Alsace Grand Cru, France

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Bacon, rose petal, and celery salt scent and inform the oily, faintly soapy palate of Bott’s 2009 Gewurztraminer Furstentum. Like the corresponding Pinot Gris, this manages to retain some desirable fresh fruit vivacity to leaven its richness, and projects an elegant overall impression, traits which one is tempted to associate with the relatively water-retentive, chalk-laden soil in this cru. While it cannot escape a certain sense of surplus sweetness, I think it would be a mistake to imagine the wine will sustain sufficient interest and stamina to wait until that sucrosity diminishes, and I would instead drink it over the next 6-8 years. “For me it was not a classic year for V.T. or S.G.N.,” says Jean-Christophe Bott of 2009. “There was very little botrytis, and when we started picking it was with the aim to make the best possible normal range. I found most of the Gewurztraminer very aromatic and fruity, but soft and lacking the depth of their sites; too much on the varietal side, so I preferred to mostly declassify, and also because in 2008 we had a great vintage whose wines really taste of their sites.” My judgment on 2008 is qualified. Detached tartness and decidedly fungal overtones suggest that in some instances fruit had to be harvested lest it succumb to botrytis. A measure of that fungal advance is that the nobly sweet wines in the present collection are enormously high in sugar and quite strongly marked by botrytis, yet represent the product of picking entire blocks rather than bunch-selection.Various importers, including Beaune Imports, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 559 1040 and Winebow, Montvale, NJ; tel. (201) 445-0620

With a brightness atypical for its variety (even though far from shockingly high in acidity by analysis), the Bott-Geyl 2008 Gewurztraminer Furstentum smells of toasted pecan, brown spices, almond extract, and rose petal. High glycerin and residual sugar backing-up ripe pear and musk melon assuage an otherwise firm, faintly peppery palate, and a combination of chewy fruit skin, pepper, and tactile impingement of brown spices lends a certain severity to a gripping finish. This utterly fascinating Gewurztraminer should be worth following for 12-15 years. “For me it was not a classic year for V.T. or S.G.N.,” says Jean-Christophe Bott of 2009. “There was very little botrytis, and when we started picking it was with the aim to make the best possible normal range. I found most of the Gewurztraminer very aromatic and fruity, but soft and lacking the depth of their sites; too much on the varietal side, so I preferred to mostly declassify, and also because in 2008 we had a great vintage whose wines really taste of their sites.” My judgment on 2008 is qualified. Detached tartness and decidedly fungal overtones suggest that in some instances fruit had to be harvested lest it succumb to botrytis. A measure of that fungal advance is that the nobly sweet wines in the present collection are enormously high in sugar and quite strongly marked by botrytis, yet represent the product of picking entire blocks rather than bunch-selection.Various importers, including Beaune Imports, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 559 1040 and Winebow, Montvale, NJ; tel. (201) 445-0620