Rare bird alert! If you’ve been paying attention to the natural-wine world over the last handful of years, then you know the wines of Catherine Riss are the epitome of ‘if you know, you know’. Born to restaurateurs in Alsace, Riss embarked on a career in winemaking early on, earning degrees in viticulture and oenology before an enlightening stretch with the one and only Michel Chapoutier.
In 2012, with support from the likes of Lucas Rieffel and Antoine Kreydenweiss, she purchased 1.3 hectares in Reichsfeld, some 40-ish minutes southwest of Strasbourg. Today, her plots have grown to encompass 4 hectares on a combination of sandstone and blue schist, all of which have been tended organically from the very start and are benefitting more and more from biodynamics. The cellar work is as old-school as it gets: no de-stemming, gentle pressing, maturation on lees in old barrique and zero fining, filtering or sulphur. C’est si bon.
Not many of her 14,000 bottles make it to Australia, so we’re fortunate to have scored even a few. First cab off the rank? The 2023 Dessous de Table, blend of sylvaner and auxerrois that dials up the flavours of green tree fruit and preserved citrus with leesy, beeswaxy texture and a pebbly acid line. Acidity is also the watchword in the 2023 De Grès ou de Force, a lively and fresh AF riesling with apple-driven aromatics and lots happening on the periphery: a glug of cider here, a squirt of brown lime there, a hint of struck match in the distance.
Pinot noir is the only red variety in Riss’s arsenal, albeit in three very different expressions. There’s vim and vigour aplenty and energy to burn in the 2023 Empreinte, steered by sour cherry and wild strawberry flavours, with blue-black fruit, pipe tobacco, smoke and woody spice at its core. The 2023 T’as pas du Schiste? plays out almost more like a gamay, finer and suppler yet more deeply spiced with a slightly wilder edge, while the 2023 Libre Comme l'Aire is more playful and fluid, lifted by its berry brightness and overall refreshment factor. Free as a bird, indeed.