The 2002 Alsace vintage
Date: Tuesday, July 12 @ 02:18:08 MST
Topic: Wine classifications AOC - Grand Crus...
The review of Tom Stevenson for wines of Alsace 2002 vintage.
Tom Stevenson is arguably the world's most respected authority on Alsace and Champagne. A multi award-winning author, he writes a column exclusively for us, but much more too.
Each year, my tastings will concentrate - but not exclusively - on the latest vintage to go into bottle, which in this case is 2002. This allows me to review the year in the vineyard, and then to qualify this with initial views of wines in bottle.
The year of 2002 was, for Alsace, wet, wet, wet.
After the snap of true but rare winter cold had put the vines into true dormancy, the buds started to emerge, the heavens opened up, and it rained virtually non-stop until the end of August.
Whilst much of the area west of the Vosges was submerged right up to April the following year, the vineyards of Alsace were simply under a deluge, not a body, of water.
This made work in the vineyards difficult, but not impossible, and unlike other, much more rain-affected, areas in France, the 2002 harvest in Alsace was far from a disaster.
There were problems of mildew, but the flowering was strangely normal, completing during the first 10 days of June; temperatures in July were favourable; and although it was generally cold and wet from August to early September, there were enough good days to ripen the grapes.
Two surprising factors that affected the quality of the grapes in 2002 were the rain and the cold.
The threat of dilution from continuous downpour was partly offset by the rain making it impossible to weed between the rows, creating competition from grass and weeds, resulting in the lowest yields since 1996!
And the cooler temperatures produced extraordinarily high levels of acidity (ripe acidity, not - thankfully - the malic that was responsible for so many “stinkers” in 1996).
Olivier Humbrecht commented “Never before have I seen grapes with such high ripeness and acidity combined together. The lengthy ripening season allowed the grapes to be perfectly physiologically ripe.”
The best 2002s have the weight of the 2000s, but with far more focus and finesse. In general terms, the Riesling fared best, and will benefit from several years bottle-age, but Gewurztraminer and Muscat also performed well.
The Gewurztraminers are very aromatic, with broad spice notes, whereas the Muscats are exceptionally fresh and floral. Pinot Gris was less successful.
Some extraordinary SGN have been produced.
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Tom Stevenson
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