2021 Gewürztraminer Grand Cru Furstentum Domaine Weinbach

A very lush and exotically floral gewurz with tremendous concentration and plenty of rose hip and caramel alongside the restrained papaya character. Very long creamy finish with a beautifully integrated sweetness that pulls you back for more. Still quite tight at the finish. Fermented for almost a year and may well show better after more bottle age. From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification. Drinkable now, but best from 2024.

The 2021 Gewurztraminer Furstentum Grand Cru opens with peach compote and trails vestiges of passion fruit. The palate is sweet with Mirabelle jelly, almost creamy. This seems to have an internal combustion engine putting out peach, puffing away, letting out bursts of lemon and rose, but coming to concentrated, orange zest and peach skin finish that is just so taut and bright. The 47 g/L of residual sweetness is a fact, and the wine itself is alchemy. I have to borrow Catherine Faller’s architectural simile, noting that this wine "starts Baroque but finishes Gothic."

The Alsace grand cru 2021 Furstentum Gewurztraminer is very clear and precisely aromatic on the bright, elegant and intense nose that combines ripe and concentrated lychee aromas with delicate flint, pastry and orange blossom notes. Full-bodied, rich and savory on the palate and based on a tight yet elegant structure with a fine acidity and tannin complex, this is a substantial, stimulating saline, grippy-mineral and still youthful but very promising Gewürztraminer that will benefit from further bottle age. 13% stated alcohol. Diam cork.