Like Après-Ski without the Broken Leg
...or more accurately...
The Route to the Stickies
...starting with...
Vendange Tardive
There is a late harvest program in Alsace that is graded in two tiers. The first is the Vendange Tardive, which is often made from multiple passes through the vineyards (in which case it would be Vendanges Tardives) to pluck out the appropriate grapes for the kind of wine the estate would like to make. A Vendange Tardive (VT) must be pure varietal wine, no matter where it is from (Grand Cru or not), and only the four noble grapes (Gewurztraminer, Muscat, Pinot Gris, and Riesling) may be used. There are minimum requirements for grape sugars at harvest for the four varieties that must be met, and if they don't then no sugar may be added to meet the minimums (a common if misguided technique called chaptalization, usually used to make up for a cold growing season in non-late-harvest wines). There is also a specifically dictated date (a ban de vendange) after which growers may pick grapes that they plan to use for VTs. This is flexible year by year, and estates can appeal for an earlier picking date should their ripeness levels be ready for that. They also have to pass a tasting examination after they have been bottled. Jean Hugel led the charge on this, and you can read about it here.

Vendanges Tardives are typically not affected by botrytis cinerea, a.k.a. 'noble rot', though in some vintages this does happen. Vendanges Tardives are generally marked by the affects of a vine shutting down (i.e., sap recedes to the roots and the grapes begin to dry out on the vine. This process, known as passerillage, yields a spectacularly different wine from a wine that may have been picked a month earlier with similar sugar levels at harvest. Tasting a non-VT against a typical VT, there's no contest--the Vendanges Tardives wins every time.

Vendanges Tardives wines are a bit strange for consumers: it is difficult to predict which wine will be dry and which will be sweet without knowing the estate, and sometimes even then surprises may happen. However, I doubt anyone would really be able to tell much difference between a dry and a sweet Vendange Tardive, if only because the nature of the wine obscures any reasonable sugar content. Thanks to the tasting panel that approves the VTs, it is easier to rely on quality.

Makes Your Lips Tremble & Palms Sweat--Sélection de Grains Nobles
The context-oriented wines of Alsace--the sweet dessert wines, in other words--are the latest harvest known as Sélection de Grains Nobles (SGN). They are extremely rare and highly prized, and as a result are outrageously expensive to make your heart skip a beat or three. Of course, the flavor result is just as glorious as could be imagined, and this may ease the financial pain. Botrytis cinerea is the principle essence behind these wines. Alsace is not the ideal climate for this to happen, however, so part of the expense involved in these wines is due to the erratic nature of botrytis in this part of France. Like VTs, SGNs also have minimum sugar content levels, but these levels are set far below what they should be. A tasting panel also sits in judgment of these wines, but I don't feel this body is as strict with the definition of SGN as they should be. However, to do follow the letter of the law, if not the spirit of it.

Quality-conscious estates far exceed the sugar minimums proscribed by EU statutes, and some have even created new categories of SGN. Trimbach calls their extraordinary cuvées "Sélection de Grains Nobles Hors Choix", while at Weinbach they use "Quintessence de Grains Nobles". The quality of Sélection de Grains Nobles has improved immeasurably over the past thirty years, but this category is less well-regulated than the Vendanges Tardives, and so one need be careful, especially when buying a cheaper one. On the import market, things are better, as importers have no desire to sit on inventory if the word gets out that a wine is not up to expectations.

One of the most interesting things about SGNs is how hardy they are. I have had some that have clearly undergone some degree of oxidation, yet they taste as fresh and lively as they could. They appear to me to be more resilient than Sauternes, which is saying something. I have also had a fifty-year-old SGN of Pinot Gris so fresh and effulgent that you'd swear it had been made last year, had you not been weeping from the emotional roller-coaster that the flavors are putting you through. Or at least, that's how I reacted.

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