Domaine Albert Boxler

2023 Alsace Grand Cru Sommerberg AOC Riesling

At this early stage in the 2023 Sommerberg Riesling’s journey the bouquet is still coiled tight (tasted summer 2025). We find here more lees, talcum powder minerality, and raw cedar notes up front than the Réserve example. As it breathes we find a generous variety of citrus and citrus peel notes come into relief with white musk and spearmint waiting beneath them. On the palate we encounter that natural Riesling je ne sais quoi without angst or excess. It is cottony and very well balanced despite the 14% grand cru power that’s humming at its core. Its flavours at this young age drift toward pink grapefruit, watermelon, and real lime cordial. The wine is dry and robust yet so fiercely mineral-driven and nervy, that high-draining granite giving its edge to the wine, scaffolding all that rich fruit. The finish lingers forever, the signature promise of a wine too young to enjoy. Despite its youth, this is an invigorating wine to encounter. It feels like a true dispatch from its place, steep and windy and granitic and unique. It gives a remarkably ripe expression considering how tensile and towering it is, like a marble obelisk. Pair it confidently with sole meunière, roasted pork, or lobster.
France
White
Biodynamic Wine
Vegan

Region:  Niedermorschwihr, Alsace

Appellation:  Alsace Grand Cru AOC

Varietal/Blend:  Riesling

ABV:  14.0%

Vineyard & Vine Age: Organic estate vineyards (certified for over twenty years). Precision-farmed entirely by hand. Vines as old as eighty years, only replanted (with selection massale) on an individual basis as needed. Boxler always harvests when the fruit reaches its own natural maturity (resisting the trend to pick earlier to guarantee fully dry ferments) and may therefore contain some degree of residual sugar in the final wine, depending on the vintage. No fertilizing, ever.

Cellar: Hand sorted fruit goes into one of three pneumatic presses for an obsessively careful pressing that can last from four to twelve hours, fractioning out various pressures to blend back in or omit from each wine according to its needs. The juice is then patiently cold-settled before being racked (gravity-fed) into old French oak foudres (never into new oak, Boxler's foudres range from five years of age to over a century old). Fermentation occurs naturally with indigenous yeasts. As a rule, the wines remain on their lees unless at some point in the span of ageing they begin to taste reductive, at which time they'll rack the wine off the lees and return it to the foudre to finish its élevage. The wine is bottled after 11 months in foudre with a small SO2 addition to ensure purity. The wines are never fined and receive a very light filtration only when necessary to guarantee quality.

(NB: The identical ageing regimen and vessel size is used for every Boxler wine to provide more objective comparisons between each vintage and terroir, vertically and horizontally. The only exception is that the Gewurztraminers, Vendanges Tardives, and SGN's age in stainless steel as opposed to oak).

CSPC:  128381

Winemakers Note:  []

What the Critics are saying:  []

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Domaine Albert Boxler
2023 Alsace Grand Cru Sommerberg AOC Riesling

Region:  Niedermorschwihr, Alsace

Appellation:  Alsace Grand Cru AOC

QR code, that takes the user to all the French wines Vino al Vino has available.
France
White
Biodynamic Wine
Vegan
At this early stage in the 2023 Sommerberg Riesling’s journey the bouquet is still coiled tight (tasted summer 2025). We find here more lees, talcum powder minerality, and raw cedar notes up front than the Réserve example. As it breathes we find a generous variety of citrus and citrus peel notes come into relief with white musk and spearmint waiting beneath them. On the palate we encounter that natural Riesling je ne sais quoi without angst or excess. It is cottony and very well balanced despite the 14% grand cru power that’s humming at its core. Its flavours at this young age drift toward pink grapefruit, watermelon, and real lime cordial. The wine is dry and robust yet so fiercely mineral-driven and nervy, that high-draining granite giving its edge to the wine, scaffolding all that rich fruit. The finish lingers forever, the signature promise of a wine too young to enjoy. Despite its youth, this is an invigorating wine to encounter. It feels like a true dispatch from its place, steep and windy and granitic and unique. It gives a remarkably ripe expression considering how tensile and towering it is, like a marble obelisk. Pair it confidently with sole meunière, roasted pork, or lobster.

TECHNICAL INFO

Varietal/Blend:  Riesling

ABV:  14.0%

Vineyard:  Organic estate vineyards (certified for over twenty years). Precision-farmed entirely by hand. Vines as old as eighty years, only replanted (with selection massale) on an individual basis as needed. Boxler always harvests when the fruit reaches its own natural maturity (resisting the trend to pick earlier to guarantee fully dry ferments) and may therefore contain some degree of residual sugar in the final wine, depending on the vintage. No fertilizing, ever.

Cellar: Hand sorted fruit goes into one of three pneumatic presses for an obsessively careful pressing that can last from four to twelve hours, fractioning out various pressures to blend back in or omit from each wine according to its needs. The juice is then patiently cold-settled before being racked (gravity-fed) into old French oak foudres (never into new oak, Boxler's foudres range from five years of age to over a century old). Fermentation occurs naturally with indigenous yeasts. As a rule, the wines remain on their lees unless at some point in the span of ageing they begin to taste reductive, at which time they'll rack the wine off the lees and return it to the foudre to finish its élevage. The wine is bottled after 11 months in foudre with a small SO2 addition to ensure purity. The wines are never fined and receive a very light filtration only when necessary to guarantee quality.

(NB: The identical ageing regimen and vessel size is used for every Boxler wine to provide more objective comparisons between each vintage and terroir, vertically and horizontally. The only exception is that the Gewurztraminers, Vendanges Tardives, and SGN's age in stainless steel as opposed to oak).

CSPC:  128381

Winemakers Note: []

What the Critics are saying: []

Giovanni Autuori
Calgary + Alberta South

T: 403-971-1898

E: giovanni@vinoalvino.ca

Joe Gurba
Edmonton + Alberta North

T: 780-203-5284

E: joeg@vinoalvino.ca

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TECHNICAL INFO

Country:  France

Region:  Niedermorschwihr, Alsace

Appellation:  Alsace Grand Cru AOC

Climate: 

Altitude: 

Soils: 

Varietal/Blend:  Riesling

Fermentation:  Spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts in old oak puncheons.

Ageing: 

Vineyard & Vine Age:  Bull Swamp and Manilla vineyards in Baw Baw Shire. The vines were planted in 1961 and and 1964 respectively.

ABV:  14.0%

Produced Cases:  50

CSPC:  128381

Calgary + Alberta South

Andrew Stewart

403-604-0408

andrew@vinoalvino.ca

Rajat Parr & Sashi Moorman in the vineyard

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Edmonton + Alberta North

Joe Gurba

780-203-5284

joe@vinoalvino.ca

Saskatoon + Saskatchewan South

Kerrie Gavin

306-290-0277

kerrie@vinoalvino.ca