My Cadillac and my pinky ring,..they restoreth me in thee.

One of the great pleasures of wine enjoyment is the methodical ritual of wine cellaring or conscious maturation. This getting to know a wine can be a long relationship or something equivalent to a spontaneous one night stand. Thinking about the wine like one might a person, the bottle, depending on how many bottles of that specific wine you own, could be more like a day spent aimlessly strolling the streets of an urban metropolis , like a weekend retreat with a new lover or if you are lucky, like a lifelong relationship that continues to unfold. The bottle itself is all about memory and all at once about a building upon experiences that ultimately create an overall conclusive impression. In the end, whether it be a one time deal or something that carries on and evolves, that single bottle is just a sampling of the much bigger picture. Sadly, in most instances, wine is unlike a fifty year marriage, and we as consumers never actually get the chance to have it “all”. So, speaking to memory and building of relationships, it is, regardless of how many bottles you actually own of any particular wine, always quite interesting to me to watch the evolution and see what happens from day to day or week, month to month or year to year.
Earlier this week, I shared my 5th bottle of Marcel Deiss, Mambourg, Alsace Grand Cru with a good friend. Like an annual secret rendezvous with an old high school sweetheart in a distant and land, this wine has sprouted a few gray hairs but is sexier than ever.

Marcel Deiss is one of my all time favorite Alsatian producers. Many of his vineyards are planted with a mixture of Riesling, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer and more. This is not that unusual in Alsace – many Grand Cru sites include a number of different varieties. What is unusual, however, is to treat than as a field blend, with all grapes going into the final wine. Blends are not new to Alsace, of course; there are many Edelzwicker blends available, of which some are delicious. But these are usually sourced from AC rather than Grand Cru vineyards, and often feature Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer, not the region’s most noble grape, Riesling. But here Deiss has another controversy; many of these wines are named for the vineyard, rather than by the grape varieties, which would be standard practice in this region of France. Labeling Alsace Grand Cru without varietal information - as has been the practice chez Deiss - was, until 2005, operating outside the INAO regulations. A change in the law, however, means that such labeling is now permitted, thereby bringing Deiss into the fold.


2002 Marcel Deiss, Mambourg, Alsace: 08-31-2010
The wine is always warm, exceedingly rich and tropical. The riper than ripe yet somehow magically fresh, open nose shows lots of tropical fruit notes minerality, lanolin, honeycomb. The palate is ripe and open knit now- more so than 1 year ago showing more minerality, lanolin and honeycomb bound by surreal unctuousness. Quite sweet though balanced with lovely fruitiness and astounding textural appeal. The explosive palate finishes smoky with richness and power: lots of mineral extract, high relative acidity - finishes off-dry.



Our father
Which art on Wall Street
Honored be thy buck
Thy kingdom came
This be thy year
From sea to shining sea
Thou givest me false pride
Funked down by the riverside
From every head and ass, may dollars flow
Give us this pay
Our daily bread
Forgive us our goofs
As we rob from each other
He maketh me to sell dope to small children
For thou art evil
And we adore thee
Thy destruction and thy power
They comfort me
My Cadillac and my pinky ring
They restoreth me in thee
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of poverty
I must feel their envy
For I am loaded, high and all those other goodies
That go along with the good god big buck
To your horse
A ? grows there
Ahead in time, the unexpected soul-searching beam of the strobe
But now, the stairway looms
And as I rise
The cries of kittens, gray, make way
For there, now near
Here now, gone, alone
I feel my wrist, it flicks the switch
No lights reveal the room or me
She sees, then panics, grabs a light
I scream, silent comforts that are not heard
I panic, for I have not said a word
Hysteria hold the room in sway
I run, I back away, to hide
From what?
From fear?
The truth, the light?
Is truth the light?