Riesling Reserve Personnelle Vendanges Tardives
⏳ Drinking Window
Typically best enjoyed 10–30 years from the vintage release, with exceptional vintages aging gracefully for half a century.
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
blue cheese, roasted duck, fruit tarts
✨ Technical Specifications
Famille Hugel's Riesling Vendanges Tardives is a monument to Alsatian winemaking, representing a category that the Hugel family itself helped define and codify into French wine law in 1984. Sourced from the steep, clay-limestone slopes of Riquewihr—particularly the historic Schoenenbourg Grand Cru, famed since the Middle Ages for its exceptional Rieslings—this late-harvest masterpiece is only produced in stellar vintages. The grapes are harvested weeks after the main crop, allowing them to achieve overripeness and often develop noble rot. In the cellar, the juice undergoes a slow, natural fermentation and is aged in historic, century-old oak casks. The resulting wine is a sublime balance of intense concentration, residual sweetness, and the searing, vibrant acidity characteristic of the Riesling grape, underpinned by a profound stony minerality.
🍾 About the Producer
Established in 1639 in the picturesque medieval village of Riquewihr, Famille Hugel is one of the most venerable and celebrated wine producers in Alsace, France. Managed continuously by more than a dozen generations of the Hugel family, the estate combines historic family vineyards with carefully sourced fruit to champion the diverse terroirs of the region. Hugel was instrumental in establishing the official regulations for Alsace's revered late-harvest categories, Vendanges Tardives and Sélection de Grains Nobles. Renowned globally for their purity, elegance, and ageability, the winery crafts benchmark dry and sweet expressions of noble Alsace varieties, particularly Riesling, Gewurztraminer, and Pinot Gris, vinified traditionally in century-old oak foudres.
🍇 Grape Varieties
Riesling
🍷 Alcohol By Volume (ABV)
11.5-12.5