Peach preserves, candied grapefruit rind, white truffle, white raisin, and butterscotch scent the Bott-Geyl 2008 Pinot Gris Sonnenglanz Selection de Grains Nobles and inform a glycerin-rich palate, with nearly 200 grams of residual sugar facing off against measurably strong acidity; the bitter elements of grapefruit peel; and an imponderable sense of high extract. Even so, there is a certain amount of residual stickiness to this wine’s confectionary finish, and one will have to be willing to wait for 20 years, I suspect, to witness any significant diminution of that impression. “For me it was not a classic year for V.T. or S.G.N.,” says Jean-Christophe Bott of 2009. “There was very little botrytis, and when we started picking it was with the aim to make the best possible normal range. I found most of the Gewurztraminer very aromatic and fruity, but soft and lacking the depth of their sites; too much on the varietal side, so I preferred to mostly declassify, and also because in 2008 we had a great vintage whose wines really taste of their sites.” My judgment on 2008 is qualified. Detached tartness and decidedly fungal overtones suggest that in some instances fruit had to be harvested lest it succumb to botrytis. A measure of that fungal advance is that the nobly sweet wines in the present collection are enormously high in sugar and quite strongly marked by botrytis, yet represent the product of picking entire blocks rather than bunch-selection.Various importers, including Beaune Imports, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 559 1040 and Winebow, Montvale, NJ; tel. (201) 445-0620