Browse Tag

pinot gris

Amelia

Ehrhart 2004 Pinot Gris Brand (Alsace) – Steely black quartz and pyrite, with a dense lacquer of intensely-mineralistic pear and spice. Firm, intense, striking. This is served to me as a dessert wine of sorts, but the tiny bit of sugar is completely overwhelmed by structure and extract; you’ll notice it, but you won’t mind it. Should be stunning in about fifteen years. (6/08)

Mittnacht-up

Mittnacht Frères 2006 Pinot Gris “Terre d’etoiles….” (Alsace) – Good, showing red fruit alongside ripe pear and a certain low-grade crispness. There’s cold minerality, too, which should be further exposed with a little time. Not too much, though; this is a tasty quaffing-style pinot gris, with good balance and not too much residual sugar. (5/08)

Personally reserved

Trimbach 1999 Pinot Gris “Réserve Personnelle” (Alsace) – Way too young and angry at being opened at first, but it does eventually develop, showing its potential with a piercing, focused and columnar expression of metallic pear with white spice flung at the exterior. It’s a bit acid-deficient (Trimbach preserved more acidity in their other grapes in this difficult year), and I don’t know how long it will be valuable to hold this, but certainly a few more years will render it more accessible. What’s happening now is the stripping of the fruit away from the raw metal core, which is something that very few Alsatian pinots do, but this one almost always does, and the result is nearly unique. It will never be a truly great pinot gris, but it should be a very good one. (5/08)

Dis a gris

Edmunds St. John 2006 Pinot Gris Witters (El Dorado County) – Though Steve remains baffled, I still think this tastes like a crisper form of viognier. It’s floral, perfumed, and slightly honeyed, with neither the spiced pear of Alsace, the squiggly citrus or crystalline minerality of northeastern Italy, or fruity fennel of the more innocuous versions from Oregon, New Zealand, and so forth. I will, however, note that after three days open (only part of that time refrigerated), a little bit of pear does emerge…while the wine fades around it. I do like the wine, despite my struggle to embrace its varietal turmoil, so Steve and I will have to agree to dis a gris. (5/08)

We, a gris, then?

Kaimira Estate 2004 Pinot Gris (Brightwater) – Pear skin, lemon, and ripe fennel that shades towards anise later on. There’s also grapefruit, apricot, and pear juice. All this produce is presented cleanly and with fine acidic crispness, which helps open a window through which a little underlying minerality can be sensed. 3.5 to 4 grams residual sugar. Very promising, and one of the better pinot gris I’ve tasted on this trip. (3/05)

A gris to disagree

[vineyard]Hugel 1990 Pinot Gris “Vendange Tardive” (Alsace) – Thick and soupy. Spiced pear, of course, but little else of note. There’s nothing refreshing about this wine, which is rather leaden up front, then thins, then re-hefts for a big, dull finish. (4/08)

Palmina card

[bottle & glasses]Palmina 2006 Pinot Grigio (Santa Barbara County) – Decidedly grigio rather than gris, bringing a froth of grapefruit rind, juice, and zippy herbality up front, and leaving them center-stage while bigger, less aggressive citrus and melon notes improvise in the background. Very good acidity lends worthy structure. The finish is a bit short, but otherwise this is a tasty wine, and one that will probably fool many as to origin. (4/08)

Five stages of gris

Elk Cove 2006 Pinot Gris (Willamette Valley) – Sweet pear water ice (or, if you’re not from Philadelphia, Italian ice). This just tastes sweet with aught else to show for it; a common flaw with pinot gris. (2/08)