HUGEL Riesling 2006

Totally dry with high natural acids. This famous grape celebrated in all the Rhine valley combines great elegance, finesse and minerality. Our most gastronomic wine for most fish and seafood dishes and many Alsace specialties.

Presentation

Quick View
It is the Pinot Noir of white wines! Riesling is our most demanding variety as it is also the latest ripening. Dry and elegant, it expresses its best on our steepest slopes with a most complex minerality.
The vintage
The harvest began on 27 September in bright sunshine… but after a season of climatic ups and downs. There was a heat wave in July, followed by an August that seemed like November, until excellent weather in early September saved the crop. Two days of warm rain just one week before the vintage put everyone in their starting blocks and so set the rhythm for the harvest. This was a true vintners' vintage, where rigorous and skilful vinification has been rewarded with success. There are some very fine Gewurztraminers.

In the vineyard
Harvested exclusively by hand from clay and limestone vineyards in a dozen of the most favoured localities in and around Riquewihr.
Winemaking
The grapes are taken in small tubs to the presses, which are filled by gravity, without any pumping or other mechanical intervention.
After pressing, the must is decanted for a few hours, then fermented in temperature-controlled barrels or vats (at 18 to 24°C). The wine is racked just once, before natural clarification during the course of the winter. The following spring, the wine is lightly filtered just before bottling, and the bottles are then aged in our cellars until released for sale.
Presentation
Photos of bottles and labels, 3 definitions, max 300dpi
Varietal
Riesling : 100%

Advice

Video
Tasting notes by Serge Dubs, World's Best Sommelier 1989
Frivolously youthful colour, very bright with silvery reflections, pale green with some lemon yellow hints.
Fresh, lively bouquet, with all the characteristic vivacity of a fruit-driven Riesling, frank, open and expressive.
This is a dry wine, not harsh but keen, alert, refreshing and easy to enjoy, satisfyingly agreeable on the palate, pure, clean and elegantly fruity. A high-level, thirst-quenching wine, a great success for the 2006 vintage, no doubt thanks to a careful selection of the grapes at the moment of picking. Drink now to enjoy its fresh fruit character, or within 3 years with shellfish and seafood, cold starters, mixed salads and goats cheese. Serve chilled at 8°C.
28 July 2007