Jonas Dostert Karambolage 2020

The word “Karambolage” means “collision” in French; in the Obermosel, for Jonas Dostert, the word describes a wine he makes from a collision of white and red Elbling (yes, if you didn’t know, now you know: Elbling can have red skins). This is a unique wine for Dostert in that it does have a bit of skin contact: The red Elbling had about 10 days of a very light skin contact thus, presumably, the color, described below. The white Elbling was pressed directly and, for 2019, the cuvee is roughly a 50/50 split.

The wine is a beautiful color, resembling freshly squeezed peach juice in its pink, fleshy tones delicately washed with salmon. As with all of Dostert’s wines, it is curt and clean, faceted and delicate, yet with a lot of flavor: stony fresh, bright tones of lemon pith, green apple, citrus oils, mineral water, just barely ripe strawberries, even vague hints of cranberry and other red fruits, very perfumed and tart and aromatic. All the notes are dilute and gauzy, yet lingering and present, floating and persistent. This is a beautiful and complex wine that flirts with being raw and Chablis-like, structured and textural like a miniature orange-wine, and red-fruited like a rosé, though it is also not at all like any of those.