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Fascinating aromas of lichen, browned butter, and peat mingle with white raisin and caramel in Rolly Gassmann’s 2008 Auxerrois Moenchreben and its lush though lively palate is similarly informed by an unusual juxtaposition of forest floor-like and almost confectionary elements. Hints of salt offer a welcome sense of invigoration to a long, fascinating finish that is unabashedly sweet but utterly belies its over-14% alcohol. I could imagine this being worth following for 12-15 years, but Gassmann scoffs at that. “It will be there for my grandchildren,” he insists. Pierre Gassmann thinks many growers’ 2009s were picked too early and rushed in their elevage. Of course, picking later for the sake of complexity only worked in this vintage if you were willing to tolerate either a lot of alcohol or a lot of sugar, and notoriously the latter does not faze Gassmann. More than half of his wines of this vintage were, by his own admission, not just literally but legally and in style vendange tardive, though only the more botrytized among them were eventually labeled as such. Fruit from sandstone soils, he noted, remained largely healthy, while chalky sites in the direction of Bergheim succumbed to nearly pervasive noble rot. Without question, results with Riesling in 2009 defy the odds and demonstrate that with time, greater concentration of already high-must weight fruit was accompanied by concentration of much-need acids, not to mention the forging of strong, generally distinctive phenolic profiles. And bear in mind – as Pierre Gassmann is anxious to emphasize – that vendange tardive bottlings, regardless of vintage, represent harvests from an entire parcel, not bunch selections, and with volumes that can be quite substantial. There are, for instance, 13,000 bottles of the 2008 Gewurztraminer Oberer Weingarten Vendange Tardive, just one of the many Rolly Gassmann wines to illustrate the uncanny and unusual proclivity of that vintage to convey levity and fresh fruit vivacity to extremely ripe and botrytized exemplars of normally low-acid cepages. If you think 2009 was extreme in sweetness even by Gassmann standards, consider what awaits us from vintage 2010, which Pierre Gassmann informed me yielded almost exclusively vendange tardive! As adumbrated in my general introduction to this report, the Gassmanns release their wines over many years, so only a few of their 2008s or 2009s are yet in the U.S. market (and I could easily imagine that scarcely any of their 2010s would be released before 2015). By the same token, current releases available go back as far as vintage 2000, and in the case of nobly sweet wines, back to 1994. Interestingly, this estate still sells overwhelmingly inside France – and anyone who has seen the lines at their cellar door on popular weekends and before holidays derives a sense for how much of that business is retail. The roughly 20% that is exported nowadays goes principally – in order of magnitude – to Norway, the U.K., and Holland.Importers include Vin de Garde Wines Ltd., Portland, OR; tel. (503) 224 2470; Esquin Imports Inc., San Anselmo, CA (415) 451 2520; and a Bryce McNamee Selection, Boutique Wines, Philadelphia, PA (914) 954 6583

The Gassmann 2007 Auxerrois Moenchreben offers luscious, heliotrope- and lily-garlanded honeydew and musk melon tinged with mint and tangerine rind; a rich, honeyed, yet buoyant palate; and outstanding retention of primary juiciness and refreshment. As so often at this address, a seemingly heavy load of (40 grams) residual sugar translates into sweetness to be sure, but not to the extent you would anticipate, and not to the detriment of the wine’s almost irresistibly luscious finish. (What to drink Gassmann wines like this with is for me a legitimate question; not only because of their sheer sweetness but on account of the particularly self-contained sort of satisfaction they in my experience deliver.) Expect to enjoy this for up to a decade, toward the end of which the sense of sweetness is apt to moderate at least marginally. The 2000, incidentally, was on the winery price list in late 2008, although the decidedly low-acid 2005 was being offered simultaneously. One doesn’t expect – even in the marathon that constitutes a tasting of Rolly-Gassmann collections – to encounter more than a few dry-tasting wines, and in 2006 and 2007 that number was vanishingly small. These wines generally manage their residual sugar without obscuring vineyard-specific characteristics or fatiguing the palate, and furthermore botrytis – where present – is typically noble and pure. In 2006, though – with rampant botrytis and block-picking the order of the day rather than selection (for which there was no time) – results sometimes defied those generalizations. Echoing an opinion that I have seen borne out in recent borderline over-ripe vintages in Burgundy as well, Pierre Gassmann insists that “contrary to what the enologists advised, you needed to work with the lees just as long in 2006 as in any other vintage,” and his bottling times were, as usual, in September. As for 2007, it is the occasion for a group of the most promising young Rieslings I have tasted here since my first visit 25 years ago. There has been a significant recent increase in acreage, incidentally, thanks to the recent absorption of property from a cousin. A labeling development worth noting: the names of the appropriate village are now being appended to each single vineyard wine; however, I have continued to reference only the name of the site, as in past reports. Finally, readers must bear in mind the slow pace of Rolly-Gassmann releases, with even their non-noble 2007s expected to appear only between now and 2012.Importers include Vin de Garde Wines Ltd., Portland, OR; tel. (503) 224 2470; Esquin Imports Inc., San Anselmo, CA (415) 451 2520; and a Bryce McNamee Selection, Boutique Wines, Philadelphia, PA (914) 954 6583