New Cuvée Buster Unearthed near Ingersheim! We visited Laurent Barth in Bennwihr yesterday and came across a barrel of Alsace Pinot Noir which was vinified as a white wine. The wine is not yet finished and is weeks from being bottled, but it will soon join the glorious pantheon of Cuvée Busters. Only 300 bottles of this beauty will be available so you would do well to reserve now. No one has pricing and no one is certain we will sell them this wine. This should not stop you from rushing to your local retailer to grab some bottles. Unfortunately, they will only sell you three bottles and there will be various tie-ins with merchandise they are having trouble moving that the retailers bought from our competitors. The wine has sublime aromatics and you feel like you're sipping an Alsatian fruit brandy, as if the wine has somehow distilled the Pinot Noir grape into a perfume. It will probably have a light rosé color, but then again it might not. Can this be the future of Pinot Noir? Barth is a young guy who has only made two vintages, having recently taken his family's vines out of the local cooperative. The guy is doing great work and it was heart-breaking to tour his vineyard sites in Bennwihr, where a catastrophic hailstorm last week touched over 1000 hectares of vines and literally destroyed 150 hectares. Laurent has nothing left on his vines for 2007, a year that looked to have considerable promise. His vines appear to be the victim of a deliberate scorched earth policy! Even though the wine industry is doing everything it can to industrialize and process wine, nature still holds all the power. This horrible storm will take a terrible toll on the farmers who work the land touched by the hail. Of course, there will be other vintages and other harvests. The 2006s, a very difficult year, tasted great because Laurent eliminated nearly 40% of the crop in the fields during the harvest. After tasting, Laurent took us out to eat at a great resturant in nearby Ingersheim that I heartily recommed to my readers. Even to my nonreaders. The restaurant is the Taverne Alsacienne and the cooking by Philippe Gugenbuhl was great Alsatian cuisine. M. Gugenbuhl was gracious enough to serve us blind a bottle of Henst Gewurztraminer Grand Cru 1993 from Josmeyer which he took from his personal cellar. The wine was dry but absolutely luscious, even thought it was from a minor vintage here in Alsace. There were some telltale signs of a Gewurz, but note of petrol and nuts with great complexity and charm. Plus, it was delicious! You need reservations to get into the restaurant and you can contact them by phone at 03 89 27 08 41 or fax them at 03 89 80 89 75. They don't have a web site and are not preparing an IPodCast for the IPhone which will be introduced on July 1st. The restaurant management will ask IPhone users to turn off their ringers during their meal, as a courtesy to their fellow diners.
Joe, what kind of soil is the pinot in? How does it compare to, say, a good Sancerre rose? |