Browse Tag

trimbach

In the year 2000

Trimbach 2000 Riesling (Alsace) – Fully mature, with a cold, iron-flake minerality paired with creamy apricot skin. I suspect the latter is an artifact of a riper vintage, because this wine’s usually a little more stark with age. (12/08)

Réserve judgment

Trimbach 2003 Pinot Gris “Réserve” (Alsace) – Not entirely insipid, but that’s about all that can be said. There’s very, very wan pear, and a bit of spare minerality, and an even more useless gesture in the direction of spice. Had I not seen the bottle, I’d think this was one of Hugel’s more insipid, mass-market products. Or Wolfberger. As a Trimbach – even from 2003 – it’s a failure, though I suppose a négociant can’t fail to release their core wines. Avoid. (10/08)

Where are Q and Moneypenny?

Trimbach 2003 Riesling “Cuvée M” (Alsace) – Really intense, with a silk-and-satin texture, and coiled minerality within. That anyone could produce a wine of this poise in 2003 is baffling; that a winery that could is Trimbach is completely unsurprising. (6/08)

Freshly-Hune

Trimbach 1998 Riesling Clos Ste-Hune (Alsace) – 375 ml. This has gotten past being tight and angry. Now, I’d call it truculent. The minerals, which abound, have salted up, and there are the first stirrings of whiplash texture struggling to emerge from jaws-of-iron structure, but while drinking this wine is no longer an epic struggle, it does feel like one is drinking that struggle. Even from half-bottle, this needs a long, long time. (8/08)

Pinot & Zooty

Trimbach 2004 Pinot Blanc (Alsace) – Supple apricot with a slight molten iron edge to it, and there’s acidity, yet the wine is largely free of edges, corners, or bends. I don’t quite know how they work this voodoo. As an Alsatian pinot blanc, it’s still more blanc-influenced than auxerrois-dominated and good in that paradigm, but it will never seem striking in contrast to, say, a Boxler. (7/08)

Tardives salad

Trimbach 1997 Gewurztraminer “Vendanges Tardives” (Alsace) – Closed and tight, but despite that, there’s lychee, cashew, not-insignificant acidity (though less than in the ’98), and a biting bitterness to the finish, which is fairly typical for ultra-late harvested gewürztraminer. This is in nothing approaching a good place right now, and needs much time. (2/08)

The heart has its rieslings

Trimbach 1998 Riesling (Alsace) – Closed, or past it? Aspirin and chalk, with a faded finish; I vote “past it,” though there’s really no reason a ’98 – even a négociant bottling – should be over the hill. (2/08)

Riesling rising

Trimbach 2004 Riesling (Alsace) – Dry as a bone…a bone that’s been etched by fierce buffets of flaked iron and sandstone. Excellent. (6/08)

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)