Domaine Zind-Humbrecht 2007 Pinot Gris Calcaire: WOW!!!!

Spectacular wine: 2007 Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris Calcaire

Last night we had chicken curry for dinner with a bottle of Domaine Zind-Humbrecht 2007 Pinot Gris Calcaire. I was expecting a nice light dry white wine, and what I got instead was a luxurious, coppery wine with explosive flavors of ripe peaches, apricots, caramel and honey. This wine was a revelation to me of what a high-end Alsatian white wine can be -- at $35 dollars, it's a steal. I'm going back to buy more today. I must thank Gary at the old Utah wine store on 300 east in Salt Lake City who recommended this wine to me. (It paired beautifully with the chicken curry and rice, by the way, its sweet, rich flavor an elegant complement to the spicy tomato curry.)

HERE is a great article about Zind-Humbrecht and their biodynamic winemaking process. Here's a quote:

In the winery, unsurprisingly the wines are made in a hands-off way: the fermentations are slow and the wines spend at least six months on the gross lees. Bottling occurs after filtration some 12–24 months following the harvest. ‘One of my goals before I die is to avoid filtering the wines’, says Olivier: this isn’t possible at the moment because of the risk of refermentation in these wines, many of which are bottled with high residual sugar levels. He waits until after winter to rack because of the risk of the yeast spores waking up as temperatures increase. Olivier only filters once the wine has become clear in the cask. ‘If you push a cloudy wine through a filter you damage it’, he says.

What an incredible result, and another evidence of the importance of non-interventionist vinification.

Also, Wine Spectator did a short video on Zind-Humbrecht's bio-dynamic process. I am fascinated by bio-dynamic winemaking, especially considering the results. Clearly I need to explore more of this domaine's portfolio.