2013 Riesling, Cuvée Frédéric Emile, Trimbach, Alsace
Critics reviews
Bright straw-green. White peach and mint aromas are complicated by delicate herbs and chlorophyll on the enticing nose. Intensely flavored and deep, conveying a saline freshness to the stone fruit and herb flavors. Finishes pliant and long, with firm minerality and a suggestion of gingery spices. This Frédéric Emile is more influenced by the Geisberg than the 2014; it's more showy and concentrated than the 2014 Frédéric Emile but perhaps less refined. It'll be great fun to compare these two FE's side by side in ten years time.
Drink 2022 - 2045
Ian d’Agata, vinous.com (Feb 2016)
From the south and south-east facing Ribeauvillé grands crus Geisberg and Osterberg with low-yielding vines averaging 45 years old, the 2013 Riesling Cuvée Frédéric Emile displays a deep, complex and very elegant bouquet of ripe, rather tropical fruit aromas along with some floral flavors. Full-bodied, juicy, round and elegant on the palate, this mineral-laced and well-structured wine indicates a firm but ripe acidity and a lingering salinity as well as an impressively pure and mineral length. Powerful and with great aging potential. In the market is still the 2009 vintage whereas the earliest date of release of the 2013 is 2018
Drink 2018 - 2035
Stephen Reinhardt, Wine Advocate (Oct 2015)
A fabulous wine with spice, mineral, salt and dried fruits. Hints of pear and dried apple too. Full and layered with great depth and power. Salty. Limestone and degraded fossilized seashells. A blend of 50% Giesberg and Rosacker. This is on sale in 2020.
James Suckling, jamessuckling.com (Sep 2015)
About this WINE
Trimbach
The House of Trimbach was established in 1626 and is now being run by the 12th generation of the family, Pierre and Jean. The family supervises all operations from planting and vinification to selection and bottling, giving them 100% control over production.
If Zind Humbrecht produces wines of extravagant power at one end of the spectrum of excellence within Alsace wine making, then Trimbach definitely stands at the other extreme – “Restraint” is the watchword. The Trimbach style is paraphrased perfectly by Hubert Trimbach and the family itself – “Concentrated not heavy; fruity, not sweet; bracing rather than fat; polite rather than voluptuous".
Trimbach wines are reserved, steely, elegant, even aristocratic; never obvious or flashy. "We are Protestants. Our wines have the Protestant style – vigour, firmness, a beautiful acidity, lovely freshness. Purity and cleanness, that’s Trimbach.” For those weary of the copious residual sugar found in so many of the contemporary Alsace wines, Trimbach’s are a refuge.
The jewel in the crown is the family's Clos Ste-Hune vineyard, a small vineyard just outside Hunawihr. Family-owned for over 200 years, it is widely regarded as one of the best expressions of Alsace Riesling.Trimbach has launched their first-ever terroir named wine with the 2009 Riesling Grand Cru Geisberg, 2.6 ha plot on the Geisberg have always been part of the famous Cuvée Frédéric Emile. A second Grand Cru may be in the pipeline as, in 2012 the Trimbach family purchased a plot in the Kientzheim Grand Cru Schlossberg.
Riesling AOC Alsace
Riesling is the undisputed king of Alsace grapes, covering 22.5 percent of the vineyard area and producing some of the noblest and most age-worthy wines in the region, including Vendange Tardive, Sélection de Grains Nobles, and Grands Crus.
Dry, refined, and delicately fruity, it has an elegant bouquet of citrus fruit with mineral or floral notes. A typical mature Alsace Riesling is bone dry, with steely acidity and complex mineral and flint aromas. Like its German counterpart, it displays a superb definition of flavours, but with more concentration and alcohol.
It thrives on schist, shale and slate soils that convey oily, petrolly, mineral aromas to the wine.
Riesling
Riesling's twin peaks are its intense perfume and its piercing crisp acidity which it manages to retain even at high ripeness levels.
In Germany, Riesling constitutes around 20% of total plantings, yet it is responsible for all its greatest wines. It is planted widely on well-drained, south-facing slate-rich slopes, with the greatest wines coming from the best slopes in the best villages. It produces delicate, racy, nervy and stylish wines that cover a wide spectrum of flavours from steely and bone dry with beautifully scented fruits of apples,apricots, and sometimes peaches, through to the exotically sweet flavours of the great sweet wines.
It is also an important variety in Alsace where it produces slightly earthier, weightier and fuller wines than in Germany. The dry Rieslings can be austere and steely with hints of honey while the Vendages Tardives and Sélection de Grains Nobles are some of the greatest sweet wines in the world.
It is thanks to the New World that Riesling is enjoying a marked renaissance. In Australia the grape has developed a formidable reputation, delivering lime-sherbet fireworks amid the continental climate of Clare Valley an hour's drive north of Adelaide, while Barossa's Eden Valley is cooler still, producing restrained stony lime examples from the elevated granitic landscape; Tasmania is fast becoming their third Riesling mine, combining cool temperatures with high UV levels to deliver stunning prototypes.
New Zealand shares a similar climate, with Riesling and Pinot Gris neck to neck in their bid to be the next big thing after Sauvignon Blanc; perfectly suited is the South Island's Central Otago, with its granitic soils and continental climate, and the pebbly Brightwater area near Nelson. While Australia's Rieslings tend to be full-bodied & dry, the Kiwis are more inclined to be lighter bodied, more ethereal and sometimes off-dry; Alsace plays Mosel if you like.
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Description
In this small but high quality vintage, Trimbach’s flagship Riesling continues to set a standard against which all other dry interpretations of this fine white grape are measured. Showing a touch more evolution than recent vintages at an equivalent stage, the wine is a bright pale gold colour and builds in the glass from a slightly timid beginning to a really rather impressive whole. The fruit profile, distinctly tropical in nature is now just starting to dry out with aromas of honeycomb, hay and candied peel showing the time in bottle. The palate is dominated by quite delicious mouth filling acidity with juicy red apples and quince providing heft before a lick of salinity at the end. That a wine this good continues to be offered at the price of a middling white Burgundy, with eight years behind it and the potential to improve for a decade more, is baffling. Drink now - 2030.
Jared Ehret, Private Account Manager (July 2021)
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