by Patrick Ogle
Les Vins Pirouettes Saveurs de Julian Alsatian white (2015) manages to be lively, fun, complicated And mysterious at the same time. The wine comes from natural winemaker, Christian Bimmer.
When I opened this there was obvious dissolved CO2 , which is a good thing; this wine is lively as heck. It smells like the first warm day of spring (yeah, really). There is something green and herbal in it. A friend said it had something like the taste of honeydew melon and there is definitely something of that in here. There is decent acidity and hints of mineral and stoniness.
Some sort of white flower lurks here too. It is a refreshing wine but, as you may get, it isn’t a simple one. You can drink this without putting thought into it or you can; this blend works either way. It is plain delicious but also worth thinking about.
It is a blend of Auxerrois blanc and Silvaner (a 70-30 percent split). The former grape is mostly found in Alsace in France--be careful because the name Auxerrois gets tossed around quite a bit for other grapes--but this is the one that is USUALLY referred to by the name. Silvaner is another grape grown in Alsace (and Germany) but with origins in Central Europe. It often has high acidity. One of the reasons I was leery of Auxerrois is those I’ve had didn’t have great acidity. I admit, as varietal wines I’ve only had a few Auxerrois. I can be as guilty as anyone about judging a grape based on a limited sample size.
Remember how so many of the wines written about here are called “bland” or “unremarkable”? Silvaner is one that gets hit with that description. It is, as often is the case, nonsense. There are lovely Silvaner wines out there--really pure expressions of the land and climate the grapes were grown in. The farmers and the winemakers make decisions that determine what the grapes become.
In this case Christian Bimmer uses native yeast, doesn’t filter and adds no sulphur to this blend of these two Alsatian stars. This is a natural wine and it blows away the notion that natural wines are “weird” or inaccessible. This is a wine everyone who likes wine will like (maybe not idiots who think they are special because they “only like red wine”).
Find this and drink the hell out of it.
Les Vins Pirouettes Saveurs de Julian Alsatian white (2015) manages to be lively, fun, complicated And mysterious at the same time. The wine comes from natural winemaker, Christian Bimmer.
When I opened this there was obvious dissolved CO2 , which is a good thing; this wine is lively as heck. It smells like the first warm day of spring (yeah, really). There is something green and herbal in it. A friend said it had something like the taste of honeydew melon and there is definitely something of that in here. There is decent acidity and hints of mineral and stoniness.
Some sort of white flower lurks here too. It is a refreshing wine but, as you may get, it isn’t a simple one. You can drink this without putting thought into it or you can; this blend works either way. It is plain delicious but also worth thinking about.
It is a blend of Auxerrois blanc and Silvaner (a 70-30 percent split). The former grape is mostly found in Alsace in France--be careful because the name Auxerrois gets tossed around quite a bit for other grapes--but this is the one that is USUALLY referred to by the name. Silvaner is another grape grown in Alsace (and Germany) but with origins in Central Europe. It often has high acidity. One of the reasons I was leery of Auxerrois is those I’ve had didn’t have great acidity. I admit, as varietal wines I’ve only had a few Auxerrois. I can be as guilty as anyone about judging a grape based on a limited sample size.
Remember how so many of the wines written about here are called “bland” or “unremarkable”? Silvaner is one that gets hit with that description. It is, as often is the case, nonsense. There are lovely Silvaner wines out there--really pure expressions of the land and climate the grapes were grown in. The farmers and the winemakers make decisions that determine what the grapes become.
In this case Christian Bimmer uses native yeast, doesn’t filter and adds no sulphur to this blend of these two Alsatian stars. This is a natural wine and it blows away the notion that natural wines are “weird” or inaccessible. This is a wine everyone who likes wine will like (maybe not idiots who think they are special because they “only like red wine”).
Find this and drink the hell out of it.
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