Alsace: The Land of Grand Cru

West of Germany, in the easternmost quadrant of France, lies a wine-growing area that is neither totally French nor German. Alsace has managed to elude the cultural expectations of either country for several hundred years, yet remain so distinct in its own forbearance. The same can be said of its wine - neither sweet with rigid minerality as its Mosel neighbors, nor perfumed and bone dry as in Burgundy. Uniqueness is what makes Alsace wine so special.

The plain that Alsace lies in, aptly named the Alsatian plain, is a dumping ground for the whine river and its tributaries - creeks and brooks strewn all over the land at different altitudes. Alsace lies just to the west of the mighty vosges mountains which define the landscape here, and also do a a lot of work to protect the grapes from devastating rains and hail.

Because of the presence of the mighty Rhine, the soils are alluvial, meaning, depository - mostly from up stream. There is a broad mix of limestone, granite, shale gneiss and the original sandstone which can be observed under the geologic spew which defines the surface. The westbound winds from over the mountains lose their speed and aptitude as the flow over the vosges mountains, leading to the Foehn effect - warm, dry winds that lack the same weather presence as the front is unable to traverse the mountain side.

This effect protects the grapes from excess water, hail, and damage from unwanted storm systems that are common on the other side of the mountain. The warm winds are also helpful for ripening the grapes, which in this cool-climate region is exceptionally important. The lay of the land is not complex itself. The wine region is just west of the Vosges mountains, in a thin north-south oriented landing strip divided by the elevation of the Rhine, which splits the region into distinct areas: Bas-Rhin, Low-Rhine to the north, and Haut-Rhin, High-Rhine to the South. The departments are named after their elevation, not orientation.

The wines produced in Alsace are predominantly white, though some Pinot Noir is grown here. Ninety percent of all wine from Alsace is white, but only twenty-five percent of it is exported. The rest is presumably drunk locally with the incredible asparagus that the region is seemingly renown for. The most common grapes grown, and the only ones allowed in Grand Cru vineyards, are Riesling, Muscat, Pinot Gris, and Gewürztrminer.

Other grapes also allowed to be bottled are Chasselas, the Swiss varietal, Klevener, a rather villein varietal born of a local crossing, and Sylvaner, a descendant of Traminer. Alsace wines are generally bottled single-varietal, for a continued focus on terroir, however there are some exceptions. One of these is a rustic blend of table wines called, Edelzwicker, a blend of the aforementioned lesser-grapes.

One recommendation that I would make if you're seeking an pleasant wine from this region, is Cave Vinicole de Hunawihr GC Rosacker. This less-prestigious Grand Cru wine is certainly good bang for your buck at only twenty dollars a bottle. It also drinks like a Grand Cru riesling should, with bountiful white pepper, striking minerality and flavors of chalk, sand, and pleasant vanilla. The fruit is sour apricot, and quince with a bit of lemon zest, and even slight vegetal notes of asparagus. This wine envelops the palette in a nice acidity, and retains a dryer finish than a lot of other Grand Cru.

The four old standby grapes, along with the aforementioned Pinot Noir in this region, again, make up the bulk of production. Notably, the Pinot produced here is far from Burgundy. They have much more brute-force ethereal presence, and hedonism to them, while still sharing a lot of the gamey qualities associated with French Pinot, without a lot of the velvety complexity. Sometimes they are blended with Chardonnay and other varietals to make Cremant de Alsace, a méthod traditionelle sparkler which represents just twelve percent of the region’s wine exports.

Those in the know will know, that Alsace winemakers generally prescript a house-style for their wines. There is no labeling process that informs consumers as to whether a wine is sweet or dry, it’s all by producer, and what the producer’s choice house-style is. For the most part, unlike in Germany, these wines tend to be dry, however, since the eighties, more and more producers have been experimenting with the lost art of producing sweet wines.

Traditionally, then, most Alsatian wineries house-styles will be dry - though dry here, and dry in the rest of France are definitely two different metrics. More often than not, the house style of Pinot Gris and Gewürztraminer will have an off-dry metric of sugar, just due to their typically higher sugar levels when the skins are ripe. Eleven percent residual sugar, as much as can be found in a can of Coke, is considered off-dry. I will levy what dry means to your imagination.

Despite the lack of labels to designate residual sugar, Alsace does have labeling for sorting times - that being the overall ripeness of the grapes at picking and sorting. These two prestigious designations are Vendage Tardive, late-havrest, and Sélection des Grains Nobles. The former indicates a desert wine with generally high residual sugar, though confusingly there are also some VT wines which are dry and off-dry. SGN always means that the wines are botrytized, meaning this category will be similar to the German Trockenbeerenauslese designation - a likely expensive, very sweet desert wine.

Wines labeled with these designations will, more often than not, will fall into the other still-wine category of Grand Cru vineyard wine. Unlike in Burgundy, there are no Premier Cru sites in Alsace, yet… However, the possibility for future sites is still being investigated. In the meantime, vineyards ascend from village level, directly to Grand Cru.

Another distinctive and worthwhile choice is when selecting a wine from Alsace, would be to go with a well-known producer. I like Domaine Weinbach's Clos des Capucins. This wine is good year after year, and offers a slightly sweeter aroma than the other recomendation. This is a Pinot Gris-based Grand Cru wine, which means intricately more layered floral notes. There is certainly a lot of that - this wine starts out with apricot, jasmine, ginger, white pepper and pear, and slowly fades into a spicy, cedary-peppery characteristic, and honeyed tangerine. It's lively and incredulous but not boastful - a bit pricier, but won't break the bank.

While the Bas-Rhin has eighteen distinctive and lovely Grand Cru vineyards, namely, Steinklotz, Altenberg-de Bergbieten, and Kirschberg de Barr. It is the Haut-Rhin, due to its elevation, that tends to harbor the bulk of the Grand Cru sites. As of 2011, there were fifty-one in total of these sites, thirty-three or which are in the Haut-Rhin and all of them are demarcated to bottle single varietal wines of one of the big-four grapes: Muscat Blanc à Petit Grains, Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Pinot Gris.

However, in typical fashion there are some exceptions to this rule. In 2006, the Grand Cru vineyard Zotzenberg was given special permissions to begin bottling Sylvaner, which prior to that was bottled in a Grand Cru site, but not labeled as Grand Cru - Sylvaner is the grape that was traditionally grown in this site. Its soils are a Oligocene limestone marl that stretches across the hill-scape. The aspect to the sun is south-southeast and this rolling vineyard is mostly composed of Pinot Gris, which gives incredible acidity and forcible minerality with a delicate palette of floral notes such as ginger, jasmine and honey.

Another major exception the single-varietal rule is the blending Grand Cru appellation of Altenberg de Bergheim, which has been given special permissions to blend the big four grapes with each other in ratios of no lower than fifty percent for the main grape, and twenty-five percent for the lesser apportioned grapes. They are also allowed to blend ten percent of any of the lesser grapes into the final blend, if ninety percent is a single varietal bottling - and if the vines of said lesser grapes were planted before the twenty-sixth of March 2005.

Soils in Altenberg de Bergheim are shallow fossil-rich limestone with a total southward exposure and no cascading from the Vosges, this means all-day sunlight for the grapes. These rolling hills harbor a depth of incredibly rich and refined wines generally made from Gewürztraminer. They have a sleek minerality and a striking acidity to counterbalance the richness of the wines. Flavors of lychee, honey, hibiscus, and chamomile are not uncommon.

Kaefferkopf is another blending exception to the general rules of single-varietal bottling. They are allowed a blend of fifty to seventy percent Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, and Riesling, to be blended with ten to twenty-five percent Riesling, Gewürztraminer or Pinot Gris, and ten percent Muscat. This vineyard has an eastern exposure giving way to sun in the mornings, but not in the afternoon, meaning a more reserved, but luscious wine with velvety appeal. Riesling grown here shows a striking acidity and vivacious citrus flavor. Soils are a granite schist and limestone marl, over alluvial sand deposits. They are good draining, which is great for minerality, as roots seek minerals farther down in the soil.

That's all,

~K