2012 Domaine Barmes-Buecher Riesling Hengst 750 ml

2012 Barmès-Buecher Riesling Grand Cru “Hengst” — “un travail de fou”

A sommelier friend in Illhaeusern had told us about the young winegrower. It was 1992. We rang the bell outside the courtyard and pulled in next to the little caveau across from the house. Genevieve Barmès greeted us with a gracious smile and a “Bonjour” more sung than said. We hadn’t been told much about Domaine Barmès-Buecher back then. Only that the wines were unusual and occasionally brilliant. Also that François Barmès marched to his own drummer, and while no one seemed to really know where that trek would lead him, the sheer energy of the young winegrower had already captured the attention of many.

Two hours into the tasting with Genevieve, her husband ambled in. He was a small, powerful man with effervescent bright-blue eyes (“les yeux qui pétillent”). François was beaming. He too sang as he greeted us — “bonjour” and handshakes all around. We tasted a dozen 1988s, but after a couple of hours, we were only halfway through. We’d scheduled another appointment after our stop in Wettolsheim, but there was no way we were cutting this tasting short. We canceled the next visit and ended up spending a long, joyous evening talking about wine, L’Amérique (which they’d never visited but hoped to), and their concern that their wines from the “Rosenberg” vineyard would never sell in the United States due to traitorous American memories of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg!

We returned the following year. Then the next and the next. Soon, it became impossible to spend just one day together. We’d stay the night at the small hotel next door. One year, we rented a gîte and stayed a week. Our children bonded.

Many times we drove up to the Vosges to hike in the mountains. We stopped for lunch at a rustic farmhouse called Ferme-Auberge du Haag. We ate roasted ham, local Muenster cheese, and homemade blueberry tart. We drank Riesling and Pinot Blanc. Then François led us outside. He had something for us to see. In front of La Ferme, François had cooked up a football field-sized plot of compost (land down in Wettolsheim was too scarce and precious). He got down on one knee, scooped the compost into his hands, and let it sift through his fingers. Then he looked up at us. All we saw were the stars in those riveting blue eyes.

When François and later his son Maxime adopted biodynamic farming, a sort of homeopathic treatment of the vines, they did so with great zeal. Each year, we’d walk through the Grand Cru Hengst vineyard. François was buoyant, bouncing in his work boots, his monologue excited and high-spirited. One time, he described a new experiment he’d conducted with Olivier Humbrecht, one that called for tying one plant to the next by hand in the last weeks before harvest. The duo soon learned that the technique spiked maturity. While the neighbors had taken off for their traditional vacation a few weeks before picking, François and Maxime spent three weeks attaching one vine to the next. It was “un travail de fou” (“work for crazy people”), others insisted. But they simply didn’t understand what made the Barmès’s tick. Looking back, we’re not sure François ever felt he “worked” a day of his life. His vineyard “work” was joyous. At the end of what should have been an exhausting day, those blue eyes remained animated, almost gleeful, likely already considering the next little viticultural twist he’d conjure up come morning.

As we wrote several years ago, our friend of over a decade died in a tragic mountain bike accident, leaving the vineyards and cellar to his son, Maxime. In what turned out to be one of the finest Alsacien summers of the new millennium, Maxime crafted a Riesling Grand Cru “Hengst” that would have made his father proud.

The 2012 Domaine Barmès-Buecher Riesling Hengst Grand Cru is pure golden in color. Wonderfully complex nose of honeysuckle, white peach, sweet spice, and rose petals. Big, rich, dense, and weighty on the attack, beautifully precise. Despite all the opulence of the vintage, still crisp and zesty, with great penetration, tension, and energy. Drink now-2035.

93 and 92+ points, respectively, from Galloni and Parker — as if “points” even matter on wines like this. Regularly $60. Today: $30. The LAST 10 cases are up for grabs — no dawdling!