The Wines of Alsace

Located on France's eastern border, Alsace is one of Europe's great gastronomic treasures. Its unique local cuisine, part German and part French, is perfectly complemented by a rich selection of world-class white wines. Now Alsace is a very narrow region that is sitting between on the left the Vosges mountain that gives a natural protection from the west weather and on the right you have the Rhine river and Germany and this narrow region is actually the smallest wine region in France. You have average 650 millimeter rain per year average so what it makes Alsace vineyards by the driest from France. That's the reason we can produce fantastic long ripening grape varieties like Riesling, Gewürztraminer and Pinot Gris which demand to ripen slowly. Alsace has been shaped by centuries of competing empires often clashing on its own borders. The region was French until 1871. Germany took control of the region during the Franco-Prussian war but it was ceded back to France at the end of World War I. Germany occupied Alsace again at the beginning of the Second World War until the Alsatians rejoined France in 1945. This is a meeting place between the French culture and the Germanic culture. To explain the Alsace history a good example would be the three last generations. My grandfather was born Prussian and he studied German. He didn't speak any French. My father was born just before the second war and he studied half French and then the war came and he studied German. Result he don't speak German, he don't speak French. He speaks Alsatian language. My generation I studied French and I speak fluently French. So three generations, three languages. The German history that we have here in Alsace is everywhere but we've been influenced by France too. This unique blend of German and French cultures has influenced both winemaking and gastronomy in the region. Alsace has the best of Germany and the best of France. If you talk sausages, if you talk bacon, if you talk choucroute, we have some escargot, we have some onion pie, we have different things. Food is a very important matter. You never miss lunchtime. Alsace really somehow had to stand for itself because we know we go on and on between Germany and France. We kind of developed our own identity of being and the gastronomy became a really big part of that. Located in the foothills of the Vosges range, Alsace is a geologist's dream and a mosaic of soil. From one vineyard to the next, soil varies dramatically. We have sandstones, we have volcanic stones, we have clay, we have marm, we have granite. We have all examples possible of soils and each soil demands a specific grape. Just a very quick and simple example. Look on my left side. Here is a soil based on clay and marm. It's a very heavy soil and this soil is very good for Gewürztraminer grapes. These Gewürztraminer grapes. When we go just on the side of the road with one, two meters, we change absolutely different soils. We have white sandstone and quartz and this is absolutely fabulous for racing. That is a racing grape. So Alsace is so diverse that in such a small distance you have two radically different soils and two different places for grapes. It's why Alsace is considered as confusing for people who have habits to have just one concept. In Alsace you have not just one concept, you have a lot of concepts together. Yet confusion extends to the wine label and winemakers struggle to communicate the stylistic diversity of their wines to customers. One of our challenges in the coming years is to find a common language to show which kind of wine is in the bottle. We decided with my colleague from Hengst to create an expression index from one, dry, to five, sweet, to give an indication to the final consumer so he can find which kind of wine is in the bottle. We use the European mentions so we write dry wine on the back label. So we have a quality level and the very top of the pyramid, when it comes to sweet wines, these wines are called selection of noble berries. But if you see on a label which means late harvest, you will expect some sweetness. Well, in Alsace, yes, it is confusing. Yes, anybody can lose his way in Alsace, but basically a consumer wants to find his way around Alsace, goes by grape variety. In Alsace, the top vineyards are designated as Grand Cru, but this is not always stated on the label. When it comes to the Grand Cru, the Grand Cru is the same reflection as they have done in Burgundy. But the Grand Cru in Burgundy started much earlier. Our first Grand Cru only came out in 1975, and today we are up to 51 Grand Cru. Only certain grape varieties qualify for Grand Cru status. The Grand Cru grapes are Riesling, Pinot Gris, Gewürztraminer, and Muscat. These are the four major Grand Cru grapes. Riesling is definitely the most interesting white grape in Alsace. Riesling is interesting because it has a huge ability to show the unique sense of a place. I absolutely adore the challenge that Pinot Gris represents. It's a very difficult grape to grow because you can get out of Pinot Gris a very dry wine or an extremely sweet wine. Pinot Gris in Alsace has this fruity character compared to any other region. It's the most flexible wine when it comes to food. I call the regular Pinot Gris of Alsace the wine for a table of four. You're in a restaurant, you have four guests, they're four eating different food, they want only one bottle of wine. What do you do? In Alsace, you go with the regular Pinot Gris. Muscat is the oldest grape here. Muscat is from the beginning of the Roman people. Muscat is a beautiful grape variety. It's just what I call a glue, glue, glue wine. Easy, fresh, fruity, refreshing, perfect as an aperitif, perfect with grilled fish, perfect with salad, perfect with vegetables. It's a fantastic, fantastic wine. Gewurztraminer is a small grape, a little bit pink color, giving this huge diversity of flavors, more on this rosy flavors, on this litchi. It's very diversified. You see, Gewurztraminer is probably the grape where you have to reach the best balance in the trilogy sugar, acid, alcohol. Like most of the wine world, there are always exceptions. And a fifth grape, Sauvanner, is allowed in one Grand Cru vineyard, Zotzenberg. Pinot Noir, it represents 10% of the total I create in Alsace. We see that future for Pinot Noir is good. The last five, 10 years were amazing in quality of Pinot Noir. In the early 1900s, some champagne producers relocated to Alsace, then part of Germany, to avoid the legal hassles of exporting to the German market. This early emphasis on sparkling winemaking allowed Alsace to become one of France's best producers of Cremant wines. The grapes that we can put in Cremant are very diverse. Actually, the only grapes that we can't put in Cremant are Sylvaner and Gewurztraminer. In Alsace's relatively dry climate, winemakers are often attracted to organic and even biodynamic viticulture. Biodynamic is big in Alsace because Steiner was close to Alsace. The Steiner Center was close to Basel, and so Alsace has always been influenced by Steiner's idea. If you are organic, you avoid the use of chemicals, which is very positive, of course, but I would say biodynamic is a step further. So you use plants like willow, like horsetail, like stinging nettles, and just in using these plants, in working with natural rhythms, of course the weather, but also the moon rhythms, we can have healthy grapes, tasteful grapes, and really who express the terroir expression at a very high level. A respect for the vineyards, a deep gastronomic tradition, and a blend of German and French cultures culminates in a range of classic white wines that provide the sommelier with a diverse palette of options for surprising their guest. Be curious, be adventurous, and Alsace will not disappoint you. The Guild of Sommeliers is a non-profit membership organization for wine professionals. To join our online community, visit us on the web at guildsomm.com.