The Blanck 2006 Gewurztraminer Altenbourg smells of mint, rose petal, peach, and vividly fresh ginger; its hint of sweetness on a silken palate offer excellent support for the wine’s inner-mouth florality, peaches, and ginger and it combines creaminess and amplitude with a lovely sense of lift. This is strikingly fine for its vintage and should be worth following for at least 3-5 years. Philippe Blanck says his brother is consciously trying to pick their Gewurztraminer crus earlier – not just in 2006 – to preserve freshness and permit a satisfying balance at lower levels of residual sugar than had become the norm during the preceding decade. Frederic and Philippe Blanck are among the wine world’s – hardly just Alsace’s or France’s – truly late-releasers, and Philippe opines that their 2007s – which he compares with the 2001s – will need especially long to show their best. That noted, I found the wines highly expressive at age one year, and the domaine did a more than credible job of 2006, too. Perhaps a bit paradoxically in light of their pleas for cellar maturation, the Blancks are moving increasingly toward the use of screwcap closure, and Philippe Blanck says that when he goes back and tastes the first wines he bottled this way – from vintages 2001 and 2002 – he is delighted with their evolution, or perhaps, in fact, their freshness and relative lack of evolution. (For an isolated comparison under cork and screwcap, see my tasting note on the Blancks’ 2006 Schlossberg Riesling.) This is one of several addresses where a tendency to revert to drier bottlings can be observed, for more about which consult my tasting notes on the Blancks’ 2007 Pinot Gris and on their 2006 and 2007 Gewurztraminer crus. Note that I was not able to taste the entire Blanck line-up from either of the vintages under consideration. In particular, there were two 2007 V.T.s I missed through an unfortunate accident in which dozens of fruit flies met their end inside the previously opened bottles before they reached me!Imported by: Michael Skurnik Wines, Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300 and by The Stacole Company, Boca Raton, FL; tel. (561) 998 0029