2002 Gewurztraminer Mambourg "S" Selection de Grains Nobles

I'm not aware of another Alsace estate owner who routinely practices a two-year elevage, and the iconoclastic Tempe sometimes waits as long as three years. The long barrel aging enables him to avoid filtering most of his wines, even those with considerable residual sugar. Tempe has worked according to biodynamie since 1996, but he told me that in recent years he has sulfured his wines at the bottling. It all depends on the "return of minerality" that takes place during the wines' time in barrel. The more minerality a wine has, says Tempe, the less sulfur he needs to add. Tempe described 2004 as "a good average year, with an atypically large crop. All the stuff picked at the beginning was healthy; the botrytis came later. But gewurztraminer suffered, as the summer was not hot enough to bring full ripeness." Tempe added that he rarely has grey rot in his vines. "That's normally more of a problem with overly vigorous vines." Not surprisingly in light of his bottling and release schedule, Tempe showed me a number of 2003s and even 2002s, but very few 2005s, as many of these wines were still fermenting. There's often a rusticity to these very naturally made wines, but on my latest visit I was struck by the sheer strength of material here.