Personally reserved

Trimbach 1999 Pinot Gris “Réserve Personnelle” (Alsace) – Way too young and angry at being opened at first, but it does eventually develop, showing its potential with a piercing, focused and columnar expression of metallic pear with white spice flung at the exterior. It’s a bit acid-deficient (Trimbach preserved more acidity in their other grapes in this difficult year), and I don’t know how long it will be valuable to hold this, but certainly a few more years will render it more accessible. What’s happening now is the stripping of the fruit away from the raw metal core, which is something that very few Alsatian pinots do, but this one almost always does, and the result is nearly unique. It will never be a truly great pinot gris, but it should be a very good one. (5/08)