Beyer’s 2005 Pinot Gris Comtes d’Eguisheim is the first wine to be so-labeled since a vintage 2000 incarnation (an imposingly creamy, honeyed, full-bodied, but heat-free wine that is drinking beautifully today). Dried and jammy peach and plum, white raisin and candied lime, cardamom and toasted nuts all point to grapes of enormous richness and considerable ennoblement of botrytis. The price, unfortunately, is a bit of heat, but the opulence and textural allure of this Pinot Gris as well as its forceful energy and its enveloping finishing richness of pit fruits and nuts are all enormously impressive. Based on experience with other big-boned Beyer wines that displayed low levels of youthful heat, I think it likely that this will evolve interestingly for a number of years – perhaps even a decade – although that is no reason to reject opening a bottle now (or, at least, once the winery releases it for sale).Marc Beyer continues to uphold traditions of dry-tasting wine (even the very occasional Vendange Tardive bottling here is generally only subtly sweet) and late-release. This is not an Alsace address that seems to have received much fanfare in the English language press in recent years, but I find the wines to have been constant in their quality over my 22 years of acquaintance. Indeed, I would not hesitate in describing the best of them as “classic,” while recognizing that others might say “retro.” Beyer is particularly happy with his 2005s, comparing them to the 1990s for their combination of richness and acidity. But a large part of the pleasure in buying wines from this address lies in accessing more mature vintages, and now is a last chance to snap up Beyer’s outstanding renditions of vintages 2002 and 2001. As some of Beyer’s rare nobly sweet wines going back a decade are still in the marketplace, and as these wines have never been reviewed by me nor in the pages of the Wine Advocate, I take the liberty of noting that the creamy, subtly smoky 1997 Pinot Gris S.G.N. (92 points) is a wonderful exercise in restraint yet complexity for its genre; the explosively rich 1998 Gewurztraminer S.G.N. (94 points) displays uncanny freshness and lift as well as merely subtle sweetness for all of its 110 grams residual sugar and honeyed, candied fruit, and herbal liqueur character; and the 1998 Gewurztraminer S.G.N. Quintessence (95 points) – a silken herbal-, floral-, citric-, caramelized liqueur-of-a-wine – displays phenomenal elegance and vivacity that utterly belie its viscosity.Imported by: Martine’s Wines, Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400 and HB Wine Merchants, New York, NY; tel. (917) 402 0456.
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