Riesling Heimbourg 2022

The Heimbourg vineyard in Turckheim is located on the south/south-west side of an Oligocen limestone hill that literally faces the valley of Munster. It is a spectacular small single vineyard which is quite difficult to cultivate. The domaine owns almost 2/3 of the lieu-dit which is today mostly planted in Riesling and Pinot-Gris. We used to have Gewurztraminer, but the vines were pulled out after the 2012 vintage. When we decided to replant the vineyard, we decided to go for Riesling. These younger vines are now added in this wine and quite amazingly, perform almost better than the older vines. We could see this in many other vineyards: when a vineyard is planted with bio-dynamic practice right from the beginning, they produce their first grapes later, but because they root better, the quality is there at an earlier stage. The soil can be considered as late ripening, but the exposition of this vineyard is solar. The vines do not suffer from drought in these soils, so the ripeness in vintages like 2022 can be very fast. Just like its neighbour the Grand Cru Brand, we have to watch the evolution of the ripeness very closely in order to avoid harvesting over ripe grapes. The fermentation was crucially slow but actually never really stopped allowing the wine to finish very dry.