Domaine Bott-Geyl, Beblenheim

Jean-Christophe Bott presses his fruit very slowly, then allows the juice to settle for anywhere from 6 to 30 hours so that he won't have completely clear juice for the fermentation. He uses mostly wild yeasts, adding selected yeasts only when the fermentations are going too slowly. The 2000s were to have been racked at the end of May and then moved to tank, with minimal sulfuring and with their fine lees remaining. Bott describes his mostly dry, fruit-driven village wines as "vins de gastronomie"(i.e., bottles that are especially flexible at the dinner table), while his more serious, terroir driven grand crus are "pleasure wines" whose complexity enables them to be appreciated on their own. Bott prefers wines that are balanced for drinking a year or two after the bottling, rather than five or six years later. He pointed out that the '99 wines "support their residual sugar less effectively than the '00s, especially the gewurztraminers," adding that "1999 is a delicate vintage without huge concentration." I was not surprised to find that some of the Bott-Geyl '99s are rather loosely knit. The 2000s, however, are more concentrated and structured, with more convincing fruit and soil character. Beginning in 2000, the domain has been farmed according to the precepts of biodynamie (European Cellars, New York, NY; North Berkeley Imports, Berkeley, CA.)