Domaine Paul Blanck Alsace Grand Cru Schlossberg Riesling 2021 (13% ABV) – 91
SR | Precise and detailed on the bright, deep, and complex nose, with a clear and elegant Riesling fruit intertwined with savory flint-stone aromas and notes of crushed crisp bread, this Schlossberg is a rich and juicy, yet refined and elegant, well-balanced and sustained Riesling, with fine and structuring tannins and a long, intense, powerful finish. The wine is a sleeping giant and needs some years in the bottle to relax its muscles and become more slinky, but it definitely has huge talents. The finish is salivating and stimulatingly bitter. 94
AJ | Very pale steel-gold. More raw and appley than almost all of its Schlossberg peers, as if it had been picked on the early side. It still has some floral grace and charm, though, and some may construe that slight rawness as being of mineral or granitic origin in some way, though for me that would be misjudged. But a wine both taut and pungent; indeed almost smoky in the "gunflint" sense (though that is an aroma note of sulfur origin). Enticing, anyway, along aromatically lean and racy lines. Lots of driving acidity (though this is Alsace, so it is not brutal or uncomfortable), with less developed fruit notes than many. The nose, in fact, gave a very true account of this wine, which for me is a little too "tightly wound" to give maximum pleasure or express the site most exquisitely. Perhaps a high-sited vineyard? 87
AR | A youthful pale-green hue leads you to an instantly attractive aromatic quality here, with both intensity and freshness of limes tinged with a light spiciness; and when you taste, after a textural tingle on the tongue, the first impression is of fresh fruit, limes and lemons, with a fresh, zesty quality whose intensity streaks the fruit with a trenchant, linear quality, drawing it out into a satisfyingly dry, mouthwatering finish. 92