One of the first wines and vintners to force me to reexamine how I thought about wines was Jean-Michel Deiss of Domaine Marcel Deiss. Slender, angular Alsatian bottles generally list grape variety on the label (e.g. Riesling, Gewürztraminer, etc.), with the exception of Domaine Marcel Deiss and a few other producers. Leading the charge of creating deliberately Alsatian wines (as opposed to deliberately single variety wine), Jean-Michel Deiss spoke about his wines not as percentages of grapes in bottles but as bottles that come from a single place. His philosophy that blending co-planted varieties together can represent terroir better than a single-variety is at once confusing and entirely intuitive–traditionally, it had been done for centuries throughout Alsace. A concept that frees both winemaker and drinker from constraint.
Jean-Michel’s son, Mathieu, has taken over and continued his father’s legacy of field blending, biodynamic farming, and organic production of these historic wines. Vignoble du Rêveur is his personal project with his partner Emmanuelle Milan, with vines he owns outside of the bounds of his domaine where he feels even free-er to extend the dream of his grandfather. Mathieu told Becky Wasserman, “I intend to continue my ancestor’s battle. It’s time to take back the right to dream, to build a future without limits, to reinvent wine and it’s definition.”
« Pierres Sauvages » is a perfect wine for the season—youthful and fresh but textured and complex and changing. I’m excited to pop these open and pour!
Monday 9.5.22 – Saturday 9.10.22
Vignoble du Rêveur (Mathieu Deiss), Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc & Pinot Noir « Pierres Sauvages » 2019
poured out of 1.5-L Magnum
$16/glass