Back home, back to proper wine

I’ve been in Estonia for the past few days. Not my favourite place to be, but I wanted to visit the partner. This is a great bottle to pop with the friends next door who are ‘baby-sitting’.

Pinot Gris Grand Cru Sommerberg Vendanges Tardives 2005, Domaine Albert Boxler

Essence of peach on the nose, fruity in a quite wild and loony sense. Wow, the florid craziness of this nose is quite compelling, and also mind warping. This nose rams the very ripest apricots and peaches right up your nostrils. There is a lot to this, even beyond that provided by the fruit. It has shades of botrytis and there is that creamy minerality of Sommerberg in spades. This nose is good, no freaking doubt about that. The intensity of the palate adds to the level of hallucinogenic trippery that this wine is delivering. The sweet fruit is clearly there, it has a seriously interesting mineral taste and the acidity is enlivening. And, after all of that, the harmony is beguiling. Let us be honest, you want to drink this soon whilst it is in its final flush of life, you’ll have a lot of fun when you do it. Abso-tmesis-lutely wonderful, so good to have friends who open these things for one.