Domaine Bernhard & Reibel Riesling  Cuvée Vieilles Vignes 2004, A.C. Alsace. **HERITAGE WINE**

Colour: very light yellow with green nuances.
Nose: very fresh, compact, clean, young, but also more mature nuances, earthy, spicy and herby, with great intensity of minerals and at the background ripe (even confit) fruit, honey and flowers, still a bit closed-up, but with great underlying (hidden) potential and sweet richness.  Already suggesting great breed and depth.
Taste: dry, round, intense, very concentrated, with piquant acidity, well matched by the compact richness and minerals, some creamy nuances, herbs, honey and just emerging exotic fruit (pineapple), supporting sweet richness, multi layered, excellent balance and a crystal clean and clear style.  Quite impressive!
Finish: very long, intense, coming up with great and clean fruit, minerals, flowers, strong freshness, sweet richness, considerable depth and crystalline.

* An impressive and honest, dry Riesling, concentrated, intense, with excellent potential, already starting to show its impressive array of mineral nuances, sweet and complex fruit and crystalline, impeccable style, the underlying sweet richness is impressively balanced by the piquant and strong acidity, providing tension and balance to this beautiful, clean, concentrated and refined wine. Eco-wine, excellent value.

- Now already excellent drinking, may continue to provide pleasure during the next few years, will become richer and more expressive the next year, and will eventually change into a more earthy wine with mature Riesling character (firne), will keep until ca. 2009.

- This beautiful wine showed better (more extrovert, richer and rounder) a few days after opening. It still showed its strong Riesling character, but some "Pinot Gris richness" crept in. Very versatile with food for a Riesling because of its richness.
Serious and passionate producer of ecological wines. An Alsatian wine of this quality and style is very rare these day's, the producers' tendency to seek more extract and richness in their high quality cuves results most of the times in sweeter white wines. These sweeter wines have an easier appeal to a broad audience, wines that are easily recognized as high quality even by the inexperienced. The dry and classic type like this Vieilles Vignes however offers all the greatness of the Alsace: the elegance, freshness and refinement of the best German wines together with the rich vinosity of the best French dry whites.

- lotnr.: L 0435

- tasted: 18-09-’06

- estimated retail price ca. 9 euro

- average production: ca. 6500 bottles

- Domaine Bernhard & Reibel Eàrl., 20 Rue de Lorraine, 67730 Châtenois, tel.: + 33-388 82 04 21 / fax.: + 33-388 82 59 65 / e-mail: bernhard-reibel@wanadoo.fr, web site: www.domaine-bernhard-reibel.fr