Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris Turckheim – 2020

A dry, intense, spicy, stone-fruit flavoured Pinot Gris with racy acidity and stony minerality on the finish. Great value!

Here are Olivier Humbrecht’s detailed notes about the wine:-

Bottling date: 1/2022; Alcohol: 13.2° alc; Residual sweetness: 5 g/l; Total Acidity 3.6 g/l H2SO4 (5.6 g/l Tartaric acid), pH: 3.6; Yields: 55 hl/ha; Optimum drinking period: 2023-2028; Average age of the vines: 29 years; Terroir: gravely soil on valley floor. Indice 1/EU Dry wine.

The Pinot-Gris grape variety is certainly the grape variety that offers the most different styles in Alsace. It is also the grape variety that has a wide spectrum of adaptation to different geologies and climates. A cousin of Pinot Noir, it shares its defaults and advantages. It is sensitive to cryptogamic diseases but is more resistant to wood diseases and is less sensitive to frost. It is above all a variety that reacts strongly to yield and takes on a diluted aspect when it is high. This is why we favour above all the selections of petits grains (small berries), less fertile, with smaller clusters, producing more concentrated wines. In 2020, the maturation was early and very fast. Rarely have we had grapes ripening as quickly as in 2020, especially on the gravelly terroirs of Turckheim. The fermentation was long on this wine, which explains a later bottling.

Tasting note January 2022: deep pale gold color. The nose offers a marvelous aromatic palette of ripe white fruits, apricot, dried pear… with aromas of honey. Already open and intense, it expresses all the richness of this grape variety. The mouth is ample, sappy, long. This wine coats the palate with pleasure and leaves a sensation of velvet in the mouth, almost of roundness. The finish is precise, intense, marked by an almost incisive acidity which has the power to structure this wine. There is also a nice salinity in the finish.