2020 Burlenberg "La Colline Brulee"
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Tasting notes
This great Alsace red is just beginning to come into its best youthful drinking phase. The incredibly deep wet earth, savory and wild berry aromas pull you into the deep well of minerality on the medium- to full-bodied palate. Huge finish with hypnotic spicy and savory complexity plus a remarkable saltiness. From biodynamically grown grapes. Drink or hold.
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James Suckling
Stephan Reinhardt, Wine Advocate
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The 2020 Burlenberg "La Colline brûlée" offers a deep, rich and very intense yet also finessed and complex bouquet of perfectly ripe and elegant dark and red fruits. Full-bodied, intense and textural on the palate, this is a generous, very intense and warming Pinot with intense fruit and structure, silky tannins and a remarkably saline and complex texture and this salivating salinity. Still young but with great ambitions, this is one of the finest and most complex Alsace Rouges. 13.5% stated alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted at the domaine in April 2024.
The 2020 Burlenberg is a Pinot Noir with a roughly 5% portion of white Pinot grapes. Grown on limestone on a fault-line with granite, interspersed with volcanic ash, the weathering has created a mixed soil with brown, basic earth. This results in acidic wines, helped along by the altitude of 350 meters—the highest parcel of the domaine. Florality hits with the first sniff, followed by creamy tenderness and a hit of iron oxide and smokiness. The palate is smooth, unfolding like dark silk, yet juicy. This wine used to be so rustic, so exuberant, almost boisterous with much teenage energy; while there are grippy tannins, this has been tamed into elegance, with superb energy still in place. This is firm, structured, lasting and muscular, but so toned and finessed. (Bone-dry)