Marcel Deiss Gewurztraminer Selection de Grains Nobles 2008 500ml

Yellow plum preserves, liqueur-preserved walnuts, and white raisin in the nose of Deiss's 2008 Gewurztraminer Selection De Grains Nobles lead to a viscous, oily palate of piquant nuttiness and bittersweet balance despite its enormously high residual sugar. This finishes with exceptional persistence, if not enormous lift of elegance. It should be worth following for three decades, which might well bring further complexity and more refinement. "I seek harmony in an S.G.N.," says Deiss, "not the exaggeration that is in the nature of a Quintessence or Trockenbeerenauslese; and to achieve this I don't make a selection but harvest the complete crop of the vines from terroir that promotes botrytis. And Bergheim is the capital of botrytis in Alsace." Unsurprisingly given his overall philosophy, Deiss therefore sees S.G.N. "relying on terroir" as an inherently superior and more interesting category than Quintessence, which relies on human selectivity.

(WA-May 2011)