1998 Louis Sipp Gewurztraminer Vendange Tardive Alsace

1998 Louis Sipp Gewurztraminer Vendange Tardive Alsace

Another frustrating session dealing with Alsace wine! As you probably know, Alsace wines doesn’t tell you on their label whether it’s dry, demi sec or sec (intensity of sweetness), they assume you know about it! Perhaps their meaning of Vendange Tardive (late harvest) implied that the content was sweet? Yes, somehow they hang the grapes on the wine till they start to dehydrate, and thus it turned out to be a dessert wine. I had so many Gewurztraminer from Alsace, and I really didn’t expect this to be a sweet Gewurztraminer! How do you expect me to match my food without knowing the sweetness? So it was with loads of dry pineapple on the bouquet; content was moderately sweet, with a blend of lychee tropical fruits along with pineapple, but predominantly lychee. Really it should have been classified as a dessert wine rather than a table wine!