Showing beautifully tonite with a spicy fried Bahamian conch dish.
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"...The 2020 Grasberg is from the plateau of Jurassic imestone of the Altenberg, sloping slightly north at 350m, a late: ripening site. The field blend is Riesling and Gewurztraminer fermented and aged in foudre. The nose has golden, juicy glints of peach compote edged with lemon. It has the inherent coolness of imestone and vivid freshness, but there is a kiss of honeyed potrytis without it masking the fresh fruit, lending a subtle sweetness (35g/L), rounded and peachy. (Medium)..."
Anne Krebiehl MW, April 2023
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Producer background...
"...Today, Mathieu Deiss, born in 1984, runs Marcel Deiss. The Deiss family has been in Alsace since the 17th century, always making wine a part of farming. In the 1950s, Mathieu Deiss’ great-grandfather and grandfather, Marcel and André Deiss, respectively, decided to focus on wine. Marcel Deiss’ wife Maria Milan ran the local restaurant Le Tilleuil, so wine was made both for the inn and to sell, helping the domaine to grow slowly. Mathieu Deiss’ father, son of André, Jean-Michel, took over in 1976. Jean-Michel Deiss started to plant field blends in 1990, and he made his first, and at the time groundbreaking, Grand Vin de l’Altenberg in 1994. In 2004, this grand cru’s cahier des charges were exceptionally changed to allow field blends. The seed for the idea of field blends, or complantation, was sown in Jean-Michel Deiss’ mind in 1984 when he bought a big parcel of the Schoenenbourg Grand Cru, planted on one side to Riesling, on the other to an almost century-old field blend. “My father vinified these parcels separately and let critics taste them blind. People could identify Schoenenbourg, but people could not necessarily tell which was the field blend and which was the Riesling. This is what convinced him that that site was stronger and that compelled him to also plant field blends in other locations,” recounts Mathieu Deiss. There has been a lot of expansion. They moved from 24 hectares/59 acres in 2014 to 39 hectares/96.4 acres today. “Over the past six to seven years, we continued to find new terroirs. We also had the opportunity to reorganize the vineyard we had historically. We had parcels on the plains and the foothills, vulnerable to frost and drought, which we exchanged for plots on hillsides,” Mathieu Deiss says. “That was a key point for me for the future.” Mathieu Deiss joined the domaine in 2007. He followed a chemistry and physics degree in Strasbourg with a viticulture and oenology degree from Toulouse. He worked one harvest at home, then for Geoffrey Grosset in the Clare Valley in Australia, then for Brian Croser at Petaluma in the Adelaide Hills. He also interned with the consultancy team of Stéphane Derenoncourt for six months before spending three months in the US with an importer to learn about distribution. Mathieu Deiss and his wife Emmanuelle Milan also run Vignoble du Rêveur in Bennheim. The domaine is based on 8 hectares/19.77 acres of vines belonging to Mathieu Deiss’ mother, which his uncle farmed until his retirement. Both estate’s wines are vinified in Bergheim, but the domaines are kept separate. Vignoble de Rêveur makes more alternative styles using skin maceration. “We are taking more risks, but some terroirs are simpler than here at Deiss, and we find that maceration gave a little more density.” The wines are presold on allocation, just like Domaine Deiss. The domaine is certified biodynamic. Today, Mathieu Deiss likes to play with skin maceration for small portions of his wines; he thinks it helps their balance. He has shifted to a drier register than his father and reduced the use of new oak. However, even if the style is now fresher and brighter, the mesmerizing aromatic nature of the wines and their textural richness are still the same..." -- Anne Krebiehl MW, April 2023
