April 18, 2024 - Since we recently had great luck with the 2018, we leapt at the chance to try an older one from a restaurant list. Deep yellow, orange tinged. Aromas of herb, melon, hay, honey, and just a whiff of grilled nuts. Full bodied, lovely glycerine texture. Dry, savory, and rich with cleansing acidity and a lightly oxidative note. Not about the fruit, which you feel more than taste. This really evoked Savennières for me. Not an everyday wine but full of interest and very food friendly-from asparagus to eel to pork loin.
January 7, 2022 - Another terrific bottle. Green Apple on the nose. Grapefruit. Minerally. Mountain herbs. Complex. My last 2015.
May 14, 2021 - This has evolved really nicely. It has a lot of time left though, on this showing. It is a very subtly beautiful wine, like a watered down Jura chardonnay from one of the masters like Ganevat or Labet. But it is watered down with the most beautiful mountain spring water, so fresh and enticing. Lemon, tangerine, red apple, a hint of powdered sugar and loads of minerality (again, like a mountain spring). I liken this to the wine equivalent of sitting with your back against a wall enjoying the first sunrays of spring warming your face, in somewhere cold like Sweden where I am, where you really miss the sun during the winter months.
April 22, 2021 - This has evolved nicely. Apples, with a hint of lemon and grapefruit with accompanying mountain herbs. Beautiful wine.
December 29, 2018 - I opened this and gave it a lot of air time. This aroma is one that is just a cornucopia of mountain herbs and minerals. I like the comment about honeyed ginger. Maybe a little mango too. Very long finish. I feel this needs a decant and should not be served too cold. Very expressive as it warms up. Boy is this good.
September 29, 2018 - Delicious. Same as last bottle. See previous note.
June 19, 2018 - I am a huge fan of Belluard and Gringet. I get an herbal savory note on the nose. Grapefruit, zippy acidity, mountain herbs. Mineral, wet stone, saline. Elderflower? Love this!! stunning and so delicious!
April 14, 2018 - Not as good as my first bottle noted below in July 2017 but still a good wine, and better on the second day. On the first day I noted some bitterness to the ending. Otherwise pretty consistent with my first bottle but less fantastic and a little less fresh. Third and last bottle I will postpone a couple of years, I think.
March 31, 2018 - Better than the last bottle, but far from the quality of any other vintage I've tried of Les Alpes. An odd vintage with a geranium herbal and yeasty leesy finish, for me anyhow. Still possible these bottles were poorly stored.
October 12, 2017 - Hmm this is far more autolytic than any other Belluard bottle I’ve tried. I despise wines that finish on unracked lees aromas. The initial aromas offer a bit of what I expect from Gringet—honeyed herbal ginger—but the palate feels like a disjointed watery mess that finishes on the lees. Really hoping this is an off bottle because I have one more I pray doesn’t show this way.