The acronym Breit comes from Hangenbriete, the name of the vineyard. The appellation rules for this wine were promulgated in 1976, and Mélanie’s father started making crémant in the early 1980s. From the first, he worked with a long aging period. Today, the Pfisters consistently make an unusually elegant, perfumed, top-end crémant. The wine rests on its lees for a minimum of twenty-four months (most French crémant, regardless of origin, ages on its lees for about nine months or so). There are three to four disgorgements of a given year’s production, and what you’re drinking could have aged as long as thirty-six months on its lees. This is a single-vintage wine without any older reserve wine, but the vintage is kept discreetly on the back label rather than printed on the front because of the multiple disgorgements.
The pungent, plush 2021 Sauvignon Blanc Te Muna Road Vineyard (Martinborough) offers up layers of both grassy and elderflower flavors in combination with a tropical fruit salad. It's sweetly fruited and ripe, presenting a rich mouthful of Sauvignon-ness. ...
The 2016 En Spois Vin Jaune is the prototype of Vin Jaune from Arbois. It's pungent and more concentrated, even when coming from younger vines. The soils are clay from Trias, and the wine has less citrus. It's a larger wine that is more open than the othe...