Two new reports up this week, and possibly a third – Vilmart! - depending on how many days I need to taste them. I feel a little sheepish at how short this text is (and the bleat goes on….) but sometimes a story emerges from the tastings and other times whatever there is to say is embedded in the notes themselves.
But I can say that tasting Strub’s wines under my new and more deliberate conditions was so revealing that it made me feel guilty for having rushed through them for so many years. In my formative years I needed to be tasting in March for various reasons, chief among them to be able to publish a catalogue that we could distribute in June. It worked fine for a long time, but then the whole winemaking paradigm shifted, to longer fermentations and slower developments, and suddenly my March regime was often too early to really assess the wines. Sebastian (Strub) told me he was also glad I tasted his wines in a state of readiness (them and me both) because he had started to feel melancholy about having to form the infant wines into samples I could taste in March.
At times I would arrive at a winery and be told “The wines were filtered yesterday; they may not show well,” and I’d wonderWhy did you filter them yesterday knowing I’d be here today? And now I look back on that with more than a small amount of shame. Of course the needs of the wines and the logistical requirements of the winery are more important than the arrival of this agent or that. I struggled not to get wrapped up in persona,and I succeeded most of the time – but not always.
So, Strub, as they should be tasted, and Pierre Péters, as they too should be tasted – with time for ones heart to stretch itself open and open and more open.