Soil Therapy: a new star making distinctive terroir-focused wines from Alsace
Website: https://www.facebook.com/soiltherapywine/
Thomas Larmoyer was supposed to be in town to present his wines but his passport had expired. But we still managed to taste his wines via a Zoom link, just like the good old Covid days. And he’s a very exciting producer making some beautiful wines.
Wine was not an obvious choice for him because he had no family background in wine. He started studying agriculture and then viticulture, and “I slowly started to fall in love with wine.’ As he met producers he realized he had what he describes as a soft spot for wines grown organically and biodynamically. He did five years during his studies as an apprenticeship and then travelled a bit. By this stage he realized he wanted to make a career in wine.
He first spent time in Alsace in 2007. ‘I really loved the wines and the people and the landscape.’ He looked for a full time job there, and in 2011 worked at Ostertag, a biodynamic producers. He spent 9 years there, but was mostly taking care of the sales. He didn’t have much chance to spend time in the vineyard and winery.
It took a few years to ‘ripen’ the ideas in his head. Because he didn’t have a technical background he started doing home brew with bought in grapes. The idea was to try to reveal terroirs in Alsace that weren’t very well known.
‘Alsace is very diverse and complex,’ he says. The hierarchy doesn’t let the vineyards like this shine – it’s either Alsace, or one of the 51 Grand Crus, and nothing in between. He wanted to make wines from high quality sites outside of the Grand Cru classification. He wanted to gain confidence in winemaking, making wines in a friends cellar. After a few years he decided to take this full time and rented a cellar in a town called Soultzmatt In the south of the region, not in the mainstream area. There are two Grand Crus here, but the surrounding terroirs are not highlighted at all.
Thomas wants to make wines he wants to drink himself. ‘Not being a big technician, I am relying on feeling.’ He’s buying grapes working with seven different producers, but he’s just bought three plots totalling 0.5 hectares. He wants to be a winegrower, but also wants to retain the partnerships with growers, located from the south to the north of the region.
The grapes Thomas farms are organic or biodynamically farmed, and he’s looking for long term partnerships with people he likes.
‘I’m never talking about natural wine when I speak of my wines.’ His method as to use as little input as possible, but he monitors his wines carefully. He will use sulfites and filtration if he needs to. ‘I want to make wines that are alive and vibrant, but which are pure and stable.’ He uses a lot of oak, but not for aroma or flavour but for texture and mouthfeel. He keeps a bag of yeast in his cellar just in case he has a stuck fermentation and nothing else is still fermenting.
The first two wines here are blends, aged for less than a year. For the single vineyard wines he does one year in oak, and then blends to stainless steel for around 9 months. The switch is from a more oxidative vessel to a vessel that is much more reductive, with the fine lees, allowing the wine to tighten a little bit to highlight the mineral structure. He doesn’t want winemaking gimmicks. ‘I’d rather have wines that are a bit shyer that talk about the place.’
He’s keen on Sylvaner: ‘It’s my favourite grape in Alsace.’ It’s a grape well known for making simple fresh wines, ‘but it can be a lot more than that.’ If you take and single vineyard and age it longer, it can give a lot of complexity, he says. The history of Sylvaner in Alsace is complicated: in the 1960s and 70s it was the main grape in the region, because it is a consistent high yielder that still makes good wines in quantity. With Sylvaner you can make good wine at 60 hl/ha. In the 1980s the Grand Crus emerged and the attention was turned to other things. Sylvaner was quickly replaced with Auxerrois and Pinot Blanc for the sparkling wines. Even if the sales have never been good, the producers are very attached to this grape, because it has always been their everyday meal wine.
THE WINES
Soil Therapy La Geste 2023 Vin de France
12.5% alcohol. This translates as gesture or action. This is a blend he’s been making since soon after starting the project. The idea is to have a wine that’s approachable young, bringing together the different identities you can find in Alsace. It’s majority Sylvaner (40%) with Pinot Blanc, Auxerrois and Pinot Gris. He’s stopped using Gewurztraminer and Muscat because they interfered to much. Plots for this are picked quite early, but he says that he’s against the modern trend of picking really early and having wines that are thin. ‘I like the ripeness of the fruit, the texture of ripe skins, and the lees impact.’ This is fresh, layered and quite detailed with apple and pear skin as well as some citrus. It’s dry and pure with nice concentration and some subtle mineral notes weaving in and out of the fruit. Beautifully textured, and finishes fresh. 93/100
Soil Therapy Sylvaner Reserve 2023 Alsace, France
12.5% alcohol. This is a selection of high quality village plots with a couple of barrels of single-vineyard Sylvaner, with roughly 50% oak and 50% stainless steel. Textured and fine with lovely sweet pear, apple and citrus fruit, and a saline minerality. There’s some honey and spice here, with nice complexity, showing richness but also this lovely salty, spicy mineral core. There’s nice depth and texture here. Such a beautiful expression of this grape. 94/100
Soil Therapy Lieu Dit Frohnberg 2021 Alsace, France
12.5% alcohol. 100% Auxerrois. He bought grapes from this plot in 2021 as the result of a difficult growing season with severe mildew. He looked for other sources and met a producer in the far north with beautiful old vine Auxerrois on clay/limestone soils, farmed biodynamically. ‘In my mind this is a grape that is a bit neutral,’ says Thomas. But few make straight Auxerrois from nice vineyards. This is complex, mineral and really fine with a nice hint of green, some lovely rich citrus and pear fruit, and some fine spicy detail. This had five days skin contact without fermentation and this leaves a lovely mineral, detailed trace on the palate, with a long finish with some white pepper. There’s such beautiful energy to this wine. Remarkable: sadly this is a one-off as he hasn’t been able to buy these grapes since, although he’s found a new source since 2023. 95/100
Soil Therapy Lieu Dit Rittersberg 2021 Alsace, France
13% alcohol. 60% Pinot Blanc, 40% Pinot Gris. This is in the central part of Alsace, 30 km north from Colmar. This is granite soils, and it’s one of the hottest, earliest ripening vineyards in Alsace, a cousin of Brand or Schlossberg. Biodynamically farmed for more than 30 years. Slowly direct pressed, then straight to barrel for a year. This is lively and fruity, and really direct with some mandarin, cherry and pear fruit, with nice brightness on the finish. Such detail in the mouth with a note of baked apple and melon adding bass notes under some citrus treble. Very interesting. 94/100
Soil Therapy Materia Rebellis 2021 Alsace, France
14% alcohol. 66% Pinot Gris, 33% Sylvaner. This is another one-shot wine because of the difficulties of the year. A blend of two plots that had some mildew damage, resulting in low yields. The fermentation was complicated and slow, and he decided to rack them and blend them. This is sweetly aromatic with ripe pear and melon fruit, with some honey and baked apple. There’s some richness here, with fine toasty spiciness and nice crystalline citrus on the finish. In an oxidative style, and shows good concentration, but with real appeal. 94/100
Soil Therapy Lieu Dit Schieferberg 2021 Alsace, France
13% alcohol. 100% Riesling. A special Riesling vineyard for him. It’s located on the single schist vein in Alsace in the central part. This is blue schist, whereas Kastelberg is black schist. This is concentrated, full and powerful with some baked apple and pear notes adding depth to the powerful lemony fruit. This has a wide dynamic range: there’s lemony acidity, a bit of austerity, and then also some honeyed, appley depth. So many layers of flavour, made in a bit of an oxidative style, but with minerality and acidity backing up the weight. 2 days on skins before pressing, aged 18 months in small oak. Tangy and lively, with the impression of a touch of flor (even though the barrels are topped up) which comes from the very long fermentation, with no sulfites added for 18 months. 95/100
Soil Therapy Pinot Noir S+S 2022 Alsace
S and S refer to the single vineyards this wine comes from, close to each other on the top of a hill. They are just in front of the Schieferberg, but with red sandstone and volcanic sediments. This vintage he did 30% whole bunch, which is less than he usually does, and the wine spent 11 days on skin. This is dense and has a savoury, spicy edge to the red cherry and raspberry fruit, with nice ripeness, finishing fresh. Nice concentration with good fruit and structure, and a hint of apple in the background. 92/100
Soil Therapy Lieu Dit Dorfschatz 2021 Alsace
This is Gewurztraminer. Clay and limestone soils, near Colmar. Picked this on the edge of ripeness, then five days skin contact without fermentation (he didn’t want extraction of colour and tannins). Slightly cloudy. Stunning aromatics of lemon, lime, elderflower and rose petal, with some spicy detail. The palate has amazing concentration with some structure, some pretty grapey, limey detail, and nice crystalline texture. So layered, with amazing freshness. So pretty and expressive with lovely detail and finesse. Quite beautiful, with lots of personality. 95/100
Importer: Deja Bu wines – https://dejabuwines.co.uk/domaine-soil-therapy-jp
