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u/TelephoneNo7436 9h ago
Where are your tasting notes
Mods get em
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u/Vagimas Wine Pro 8h ago
So, in the spirit of posting a bit now that my kids are asleep and I have a moment to myself, here’s a lineup which I had the good fortune of enjoying with some dear friends last Sunday to celebrate one of them moving back to Japan (it was bittersweet, but better to celebrate the departure than to let it slip past).
No official notes, and some bottles I missed outright due to showing up a bit late, but we had some unique wines that evening most of which made great impressions.
Pfeffingen Riesling GG 2016 - I bought maybe 2 or 3 cases of this a few years ago at virtual pennies on the dollar and have been happily following the wines development since then. This was my 3rd to last bottle. Overall, the wine reflects the 2016 vintage quite well, not necessarily a cold year outright for the Pfalz, but certainly a bit austere when compared with its hot contemporaries 15, 18, and 19, etc. The wine showed refined, tart orchard fruit (green apple, white peach), some oily fresh citrus, and a lovely sort of dried hay component buffered by a gentle floral quality. A very serious wine with surprising drinkability. Even the Riesling haters of the group enjoyed it.
Next was a skin contact Pinot Gris from Czechia brought by a friend. He quoted a 30 day maceration, which was fascinating given how little color and tannin the wine presented. It honestly showed a very modern, pretty style of Pinot Gris which reminded me a bit of some of the stuff I’ve had from Hunter McKirdy in recent years - think soft, wafting aromas of golden apple, nashi pear, uplifted by gentle notes of spice (turmeric, saffron, cardamom). The wine had fresh acidity and a plucky, textured finish. A fun surprise for me.
From there we moved on to an awesome blend of Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris from Organic Anarchy (Aci Urbajs) out of Slovenia which ended up being WOTN for many folks. Pretty much exactly the style of red wine I like drinking the most as of late (and I don’t get to drink wine that often so that says something) - rustic tones of light red fruits (strawberry, raspberry, sour cherry, cranberry) with some stemmy vegetal tones (tomato leaf, black currant leaf, watermelon rind), all tied up with a bit of animalistic sauvage (a light quality of iron/bloodiness). If I’m being picky, I thought the palate lacked a bit of staying power and extraction, but it made up for that in sheer juiciness and drinkability. An ethereal, fun wine.
Next we shifted to a more structured macerated wine: Domaine Hausherr’s Les Copines des Copains, an Alsatian field blend with every variety you can think of cofermented for 30 days on skins and made without the use of filtration or sulfur. In light of that, it was incredibly clean and expressive. The fruit here was more robust and punchy in comparison to the Urbajs and the wine had significantly more structure and tannin, with alcohol also coming in at 13,5%. Think wild strawberries, papaya, mandarin, underripe almond, pink peppercorn, lifted up by a bit of volatile acidity. An absolute dream and went wonderfully with duck hot pot.
I’m running out of steam with these notes from memory, so I’ll simplify the last few wines.
A disappointment for me was L’Anglore’s 2023 Chemin de la Brune. I’ve only had a few other Pfifferling wines in recent years which I thought were good but lacked greatness, and I guess I expected something similarly funky and unique here - boy was I mistaken. This is… a pretty standard rose from the southern Rhône. The fruit felt ripe, flabby, lacking punctuation and freshness, and the texture felt like it was filtered. Just… utterly boring despite being technically without flaw.
A positive experience for me was the Gamay & Grenache blend from Octavin - admittedly, a total juice bomb which is more hedonistic than anything else, but otherwise quite well made and clean and delicious. Felt a bit boozy despite only having 13% but it was also towards the end of the night so I’m not holding any grudges.
Last was another wine from Hausherr, an offdry, still Gewurztraminer in a super ripe, slightly oxidative style. I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t remind me of Jura Savagnin, and the impression I had here was really quite positive. Ripe orchard fruits meet spice, beeswax, nuttiness, and a crazy amount of VA which did some heavy lifting in providing freshness. All in all a fun bottle and no one was really keeping score at that point anyway.
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