Are the other Trimbach cuvees spoofy? I thought Trimbach was generally considered a pretty worthwhile producer, and not just CFE and Clos St. Hune.
Though I did hear that Clos St. Hune, at the very least, is vinified in a different manner than Trimbach's other wines.
It is -- to take Victor's preferred tone for a moment -- a constant amazement to me that Trimbach can get any work done at harvest time, what with all these people standing around their vineyards and cellar observing and recording everything they do.
Trimbach is not Cornelissen. But neither is Trimbach the Caves d'Eguisheim. Their major "spoof" would, I guess, be picking (some) of their grapes earlier than others to preserve acidity in a region where that's not so easy anymore. I don't think their yeast work falls into the fundamentalist* camp either. [*Sorry, I seem to be channeling Victor yet again. I'll stop soon.] Other than that, there's really nothing unusual about their winemaking. As for their viticulture, there seems to be inordinate angst that they once used a helicopter to do something that most people do from a tractor or a horse, and that a purist wouldn't have done at all. Well, OK, maybe they shouldn't have done that, but it hardly seems to move them into Frog's Leap territory. One of the ways one recognizes the Clos Ste-Hune from its surroundings -- which isn't easy without a map, and they're spectacularly un-eager to provide such, which leads to a lot of nitwit conspiracy theories inexplicably promulgated by one well-known Alsatian producer and spread across the internet by their biggest American fan who also happens to be a friend of the family -- is the immediate improvement in health but also in precision vis--vis their neighbors' vines. This is less easily seen across the Geisberg-Eichberg arc, since their neighbors appear to do better vineyard work up there.
The contention that they're somehow limiting their allegedly superior terroir rests on a decided lack of evidence if you look at a Rosacker, Geisberg, and Eichberg from any other producer. It would be interesting to see one of their neighbors work in what I guess must be the preferred way -- which I suppose would be Frick (ugh, far too many failures) or Binner (better) -- to see what the contrast would be, but none, to my knowledge, are. That said, we're no more going to know if the Clos Ste-Hune is reaching its potential than we are anyone else's monopole. The vineyards that supply the CFE, CdSdR Gewurztraminer, and Rserve Personnelle Pinot Gris are not, except in the usual very minor ways, terroir-differentiated from their neighbors, and so there we can make a comparison. Kientzler does some pretty good work, but not at Trimbach's level. There are other good wines, but just that: good. Not better. And of course there's mediocrity.
I suspect that a lot of Trimbach's image issues come from their phenomenally successful ngociant wines, which are (usually, not always) fine, but neither standout wines nor meant to be. (I also think their value proposition, which used to be formidable, is a lot sketchier now that most of them have crested $20 in some markets.) If Trimbach made nothing other than the gold-label (i.e. grand cru) and above wines, they'd be judged more kindly. But that's a guess, and obviously there's no way to prove it. If I trusted scores, those would support the assertion, but I don't.
