Domaine Rolly-Gassmann Late Harvest Gewürztraminer de Rorschwihr 2005

TAST­ING NOTES FROM THE CURATOR

Pro­duced in the small town of Rorschwihr since 1611, this wine has a delight­ful pale yel­low col­oration and imme­di­ate­ly notice­able flo­ral and cit­rus scents. Lychee, in par­tic­u­lar, stands out. This wine is of medi­um sweet­ness, with a full body and low acid­i­ty. It is very soft on the palate with a fla­vor blend of orange blos­som, peach, and cit­rus peel. Its fin­ish is long, with a bit of an oily texture.

PAIR­INGS

Gewürz­tramin­er is an aro­mat­ic wine that pairs per­fect­ly with Indi­an and Mid­dle East­ern dish­es. This is a wine that invites you to step away from West­ern Euro­pean tra­di­tion­al cuisine. 

Nuts and dried fruits served along­side roast­ed meats are a fair descrip­tor for many promis­ing dish­es to eat with this wine. High­ly spiced herbs and aro­mat­ic herbs like cayenne, gin­ger, turmer­ic, Sichuan pep­pers, bay leaf, and corian­der are some exam­ples of sea­son­ings that will be brought to full promise. As for cheeses, this wine favors the less stinky cheeses, pre­fer­ring del­i­cate­ly fla­vored soft-rind cow’s milk varieties.

RESIS­TANCE AGAINST CLASSIFICATION

Vil­lages like Rorschwihr in the Alsace region pro­duce wines that are not part of the AOC Grand Cru sys­tem. To winer­ies like Rol­ly-Gassmann, being part of that sys­tem would mean giv­ing up their indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter and the thou­sand years of her­itage that have gone into the devel­op­ment of their wines, only to be lumped into a sin­gle region­al appel­la­tion. Twen­ty-one spe­cif­ic wine­mak­ing sites exist in the Alsace region, all pur­vey­ors of excep­tion­al wine — no labels of clas­si­fi­ca­tion required.

Storage Instructions

Store your unopened bot­tle in a cool, dry, and dark place safe from con­stant vibra­tion. Keep your bot­tle hor­i­zon­tal in a wine rack or cel­lar to retain the moist­ness of the cork. The ide­al tem­per­a­ture for stor­age is between 7 to 15°C. Once opened, a bot­tle will be good for 3 to 5 days stand­ing upright in the refrigerator.