Community Tasting Note
-
SAND Likes this wine:
October 5, 2014 - Medium golden colour.
Nose: Opens quite muted, with some notes of mature riesling (petroleum / "firne"), wet, minerally stone and a distant hint of rose petals.
Taste: Rich taste and texture. Dry but slightly oily. Obviously mature but still quite a bit of fruit. Fruit stone and lots of minerals. Structured and well balanced. Long and minerally aftertaste. Mature and drinking wonderfully now but will probably keep even past its 20th birthday.
A great testament to the Hugel family's wine making skills and traditions and to the traditional Alsacian way of blending wines (grapes)!
This wine is the ancestor (or predecessor) of Hugel's basic wine "Gentil". It's a blend of the four noble varieties (Riesling, Gewurtztraminer, Pinot Gris and Muscat) much of it grown in the famous "Sporen" Grand Cru vineyard in Riquewihr, hence the "S". This is the way many Alsace wines traditionally were made, blending several or all of the grape varieties.1,101 views
2 Comments
-
Sven D commented:
10/5/14, 3:36 PM - A small correction because you made a small mistake here. I am comming to Hugel since the late 80ies, Hugel where I harvested that time as a student and which cuvees still form together with Trimbach the base of the Alsatian part of my cellar. The S only refers to Sporen but the 4 different grapes come from different vineyards (good ones) in the Alsace as a blend. In the Sporen only Gewürztraminer (6 hectares) Riesling (4 hectares) and Pinot Gris (1 hectare) are grown, muscat is very rare there. It was more rare then the basic wine now that indeed is named " Gentil".
Nice you tasted one from 1997 and that it is still "en bonne forme" ;-) Sorry for my English which is not my mother tongue. -
SAND commented:
10/7/14, 2:47 PM - Dear Sven,
Thank you for your correction, based on your first hand insight / experience from Hugel's vineyards!
My assumption about the "S" being all from Sporen came partly from the following passages, which previously could be found on Hugel's homepage:
- "This wine's name comes from its old denomination "Sporen", a famous Riquewihr vineyard. It is the ancestor of our today's Gentil, but in this case is a field blend of only the four noble grape varieties, all grown in one of the best vineyard slopes of Alsace"
And even today, the following passages may be found at their homepage (www.hugel.com/en/actualites/fichactu.php3?N=2):
- "Decades ago, some of the finest Alsace wines were called GENTIL ("blend of nobles grapes"). When such a wine was made from grapes grown in just one famous vineyard, the vineyard name was added, as was the case with our SPOREN "HUGEL", now called "S" HUGEL"
Cross checking different sources gives contradicting (or at least confusing) information about the origins of the grapes for the "S", with some mentioning Sporen as the only source, others Sporen only as the historical source, antecedant or inspiration for the "S".
But taking your first hand experienced word for it, I have now corrected my tasting notes accordingly :)