With spring arrives one of our favourite marks of the season: new Alsace wines from Yann Durrmann! We are thrilled to have a brace of new terroir-sourced Rieslings – each a direct representation of their soil – including a new parcel over limestone. With these, we also receive a full house of 2023 releases, available from tomorrow.
2023 was sunny and dry for Yann in Andlau, but with careful cultivation of the vineyard aimed at acidity retention (allowing grasses to grow wild, managing yields to keep vigour, and letting the vine’s canopy grow higher to create a shadow down the rows) the resulting wines have a real freshness and spring in their step. Fermentations were slower than usual for the Riesling, but showing no signs of volatility during their gestation, Yann was able to eschew any sulphur use as he prefers.
To taste these Rieslings with Yann is to gain an understanding of the impact of a soil type on a variety. Picked at more or less the same time and made identically (pressed directly to stainless steel tank, bottled just as fermentation completes) the variation between them is always exciting.
On Grés - compacted sandstone -the variety expresses itself with pithy citrus aromatics, usually the easiest drinking of Yann’s Rieslings, with a pleasing acidity. On Yann’s sandy Granite terroir, it expresses itself with more floral aromatics, and a pleasant white-almond bitterness, complex and long.
On Schist, Riesling makes its terroir apparent with a livewire acidity and snap, feeling chalky and mineral. A more tense style compared to the aromatic Grés and Granite, with white pepper and a very pleasing brittle tannin this year.
For the first time we have Yann’s Riesling sur Calcaire. A limestone parcel he planted 10 years ago that is finally at a high enough yield for its own terroir cuvée. Yann, forever humble despite his experience, speaks with curiosity about this wine to complete the set: “Riesling on Calacaire is new to me, the other soils I have been working with my whole life, so I understand these. I wouldn’t like to say definitively how calcaire shows itself, I’m still learning. It’s certainly on the citrus, perhaps lime, but has more acidity and salinity than the sandy Grés and Granite parcels.”
Available now, we will be pouring the beautiful new Rieslings at upcoming April trade tastings in Manchester & London - being the only occasion we will open the more limited Riesling sur Grés and Riesling sur Calcaire!
DOMAINE DURRMANN
FRANCE, ANDLAU, ALSACE
SPARKLING
2023 - Grizzling Négoce - Riesling
2023 - Gaz de Schiste - Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris
WHITE
2023 - ron-rond le litron blanc Négoce - Pinot blanc, Riesling, Gewurz, Sylvaner
2023 - Pinot blanc - Pinot Blanc
2023 - Zegwur - Gewurztraminer
2023 - Riesling Sur Grès
2023 - Riesling Sur Granit, Lieu-Dit Rebbuehl
2023 - Riesling Sur Calcaire
2023 - Riesling Sur Schistes, Lieu-Dit Rebberg
2022 - Grand Cru Kastelberg - Riesling
RED
2023 - ron-rond le litron rouge - Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris
2023 - Rouge de Pinot Noir - Pinot Noir
