Browse Tag

trimbach

Seigneurs citizens

Trimbach 2000 Gewurztraminer “Cuvée des Seigneurs de Ribeaupierre” (Alsace) – Rich, even a little sticky, and leaning on the stone fruit and tinned mango expression of very ripe gewürztraminer, while giving up the necessary structure to support it. A bit on the hot side. It’s very drinkable and easy, but hasn’t much rewarded aging. (12/09)

Trimbach 1996 Gewurztraminer “Cuvée des Seigneurs de Ribeaupierre” (Alsace) – Fully mature, and probably on the other side of peak, with a mix of porcine and dried-nut aromatics. Very, very dry. Pepper dusts abound. Pretty interesting, though I don’t know how popular it will be. (12/09)

A gris or dis a gris

Trimbach 2002 Pinot Gris “Réserve” (Alsace) – Watery and wan, with the impression (but not much of the actuality) of residual sugar, and not much else to recommend it. (12/09)

Miner issues

Trimbach 2001 Gewurztraminer (Alsace) – Pork-infused banana skins and cashew bitters with dried lychee and good structure. I don’t think there’s any point in holding this even a day longer, because it’s just going to fall apart from now on. (12/09)

Braised tardives with morels

Trimbach 2000 Gewurztraminer “Vendanges Tardives” (Alsace) – Trimbach’s late-harvest wines, especially their gewürztraminers, are packed to the gills with sugar. Their nearly singular achievement, however, is making it seem like they’re not. 2000 wasn’t a firm, crisp, high-acid year, and yet this wine seems only marginally sweeter than many a “regular” gewürztraminer from some of their hangtime-obsessed neighbors, and pairs that sweetness with a surprising wallop of firm acidity. The fruit’s peach and cashew with only hints of lychee, and the minerality’s copper and salt. Bacon, smoke…only suggestions at the moment, and their full expression is far, far in the future. A lovely wine, deft and delineated…and when’s the last time you read that about a late-harvest gewürztraminer? (7/09)

Zólá

Trimbach 1993 Riesling “Cuvée Frédéric Émile” (Alsace) – Metal (mostly iron) with huge acidity and receding complexity. Very slightly oxidized on the finish, and while the wine’s still quite intense, I think it needs to be consumed…though with extended aeration, it does freshen a bit. (9/08)

CFE VT OU812

Trimbach 1989 Riesling “Cuvée Frédéric Émile” “Vendanges Tardives” (Alsace) – Weirdly muted and overly mature. The signs of a great old late-harvest CFE are there – creamed steel and corn starch, salt, lead crystal – but the wine’s just not what it should be. The cork seems fine, and over the course of three days there’s no whiff of TCA from cork or (empty) bottle, but…well, this is a disappointment. Something – most likely the cork, absent any signs or signatures of heat damage – failed here. (5/09)

VT prevention

Trimbach 2002 Gewurztraminer “Vendanges Tardives” (Alsace) – The first night, this is tightly-wound bacon-wrapped cashew and metal, with fine internal structure. The next night, it’s explosive, not yielding a bit of that vibrant structure, but much more generous with both the fruit (moving into orange and lychee) and the black-hearted minerality (coal and iron). Fabulous, though it will unquestionably need significant age to show its true qualities. (4/09)

See, F.E.?

Trimbach 1998 Riesling “Cuvée Frédéric Émile” (Alsace) – The only reason to open this right now is to express your intense affection for pain inflicted by an invisible spirit, because it could not possibly be more closed. Like trying to catch sleet on your tongue, or maybe licking a flow of glacial ice, this wine gives nothing. Instead, it demands: patience, patience, patience. The structure is flawless, and this is going to be a stunner one day (albeit on the raw, sharper-edged side of CFEs), but that day is not today. Nor tomorrow. Maybe starting in about 2015, and continuing on for a decade or two after that? Yeah, that sounds about right. (4/09)

J.S. Trimbach

Trimbach 2005 Pinot Blanc (Alsace) – Apricot skin around a mostly transparent sphere of some light-minded metal. Good structure. Light, friendly, simple. (2/09)

Slim Johann

Trimbach 2001 Gewurztraminer (Alsace) – A little past its best, with the almost-always-present (save 1997 and 2000) bite of the wine’s structure starting to take precedence over the strappy, lychee and peach fruit. (1/09)