With its 18 grams of residual sugar not really engendering significant sweetness, but helping to ward off the heat that afflicted some of Barmes’ wines in this difficult vintage, the 2006 Gewurztraminer Rosenberg offers rose water, celery seed, peat, mint and white pepper on a silken-textured palate, setting up an improbable juxtaposition of soothing lushness and cool herbal inflections with pungent smokiness and bite. This retains sufficient brightness to refresh as well. I’d count on it being worth following into 2011. The 2006 “Cuvee Maxime,” by contrast, struck me as downright bifurcated, as well as almost swamped by its sweetness. There is as usual a lot of fascinating wine in Francois Barmes’ constantly shifting, hugely diverse as well as just plain huge 2007 collection, though the level of success was on the whole consistent. As in the past, though, I remained relatively unconvinced by Barmes’ way with Pinot Gris, despite its being a grape that elsewhere revealed special potential in 2007. I can’t say 2006 here represents an advertisement for Barmes’ conscientious and long-standing biodynamic practices, but then, in a year of rampant rot, surely the absence of anti-botrytis sprays has to have been sorely felt at many biodynamic estates. There were a couple of 2006s here too fungal to recommend, with the majority of what was a reduced line-up meriting mild recommendation provided they are drunk-up soon.Importer: Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644; also, a Thomas Calder Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011-33-1-46-45-15-29