Riesling GROSSI LAUE 2011

Grossi Laüe signifies the finest vineyards in Alsace dialect and represents an equivalent to the German Grosses Gewächs or the Burgundian Grand Cru.

Presentation

Quick View
Great classic Riesling which starts to show its promisses but which will gain in complexity for 8 years or more. Its minerality and long complex aftertaste will make it the ideal partner to noble fish or seafood dishes.
The vintage
Harsh winter of 2011 with 26 days below zero. Early budding on April 7, May warm and dry and flowering 15 days ahead of time. Summer cool, damp and gloomy. Return to idyllic weather two weeks before harvest started on September 12, without any precipitation from beginning to end.
Excellent maturity in a fair size crop with soft acidity. Wines already charming, easy to approach and early to drink soon after bottling.
In the vineyard
Produced in a selection of the finest plots of the Hugel estate in the heart of the grand cru Schoenenbourg. This fantastic historical terroir has been almost exclusively devoted to Riesling for centuries.
Keuper, marl, dolomite and gypsum, rich in fertilising agents, overlaid with fine layers of quaternary siliceous gravel, Vosges sandstone and Muschelkalk, with at its eastern extremity outcrops of Lias marl limestones.
Winemaking
The grapes are taken in small tubs to the presses, which are filled by gravity, without any pumping or other mechanical intervention.
After pressing, the must is decanted for a few hours, then fermented in temperature-controlled vats (at 18 to 24°C). The wine is racked just once, before natural clarification during the course of the winter. The following spring, the wine is lightly filtered just before bottling, and the bottles are then aged extensively in our cellars until released for sale.
The whole production of this wine is closed with DIAM the cork without the risk of cork taint.
Varietal
Riesling : 100%
Specifications
Alcohol content : : 14.4° % vol.
Residual Sugar : : 3.7 g/l
Tartaric acidity : : 6.2 g/l
pH : : 3.3
Age of vines : : 30 years old
Yield : : 45 hl/ha hL/ha

Advice

Video
Tasting notes by Serge Dubs, World's Best Sommelier 1989
The wine's colour is the young, fresh, pale green of pistachio nuts and spring lime-tree foliage with silver highlights; it has a wonderful intensity, an alert dynamic brilliance and significant legs.
The bouquet is a clear, precise and frank statement of youthfulness with an agreeably perfumed fruity and floral expression of aroma which leaves an impression of healthy and juvenile freshness; there is also an elegantly subtle hint of minerality at first which will become more stated after a few years laid down. The aroma combines spring flowers, fern, almond tree and pistachio nuts, white peach, lemon grass with a hint of salt from the chalky mineral-rich soil. There is the notable signature of the great wine-making region which is typical to a Riesling.
On the palate it is clearly a dry Riesling of the highest quality with a full, broad, juicy and strong structure, complimented with a wonderful astringency which adds length and character to the flavour.
There is also a remarkably harmonious after-taste.
This is a wine which is fine for immediate consumption but which would benefit from a little patience to allow it to develop the specific regional qualities and minerality that will give it an added aroma of white piedmont truffle in 2 to 5 years.
Can be laid down for 15 to 20 years.
Best served at 10°C, should be decantered 5 to 10 minutes before serving.
This is a highly gastronomic wine which should be served with roast turbot, sole meunière, lobster, rock lobster, sander, perch, poultry or other white meat. Roasted poultry, pasta with fresh white truffle.

Reviews

93/100