A perfect Riesling? Perfection is personal, but this must come close...

“How can you resist this barely off-dry riesling beauty? It’s brimming with peach, nectarine and spring blossoms, plus a hint of fresh baguette yeastiness. Wonderfully juicy, thanks to the cornucopia of fruit, and extremely vibrant, thanks to the racy acidity on the medium-bodied palate. Extremely long finish with a super abundance of peach-skin and wet-stone character. Enormous aging potential.” 98 points, Stuart Pigott, jamessuckling.com

Biodynamic. Dry. In Alsace, the term Pinot Blanc is used to describe varietal wines or blends containing any percentage of Auxerrois. Weinbach’s Pinot Blanc is a blend of 70% Auxerrois and 30% Pinot Blanc. For fellow nerds, recent DNA studies indicate Auxerrois is a cross between Gouais Blanc and Pinot Noir. Weinbach’s blend comes from Clos des Capucins (with 45-year-old vines) and a plot from the limestone/clay soils at the foot of the Altenbourg vineyard. As with the dry Rieslings, the Pinot Blanc was pressed as whole bunches and raised over eight months in large-format wood (previous vintages were raised in tank). It's a far more layered and complex wine than you might expect from these varieties. It’s fleshy and mouth-filling with orchard fruits, white blossom and chamomile flavours and a textural core threaded through with punchy freshness. As with all these 2022s, it’s very hard to drink slowly!

Biodynamic. Eddy Faller explains that his Altenbourg Pinot Noir exhibits a more velvety structure than the Schlossberg-raised wine (below). To highlight each wine’s origins, the winemaking is almost identical, with a 10-day cold soak, followed by up to two weeks on skins, partial whole-bunch fermentation and extended aging in predominantly old oak. Plantings are 10,000 vines per hectare using mass selections from the Clos des Epeneaux in Pommard. To recycle Pigott’s line for the 2020 release, ‘In a blind tasting you could easily mistake this for a top 1er Cru wine from Beaune in Burgundy!’