Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [64]
And more to the point, Alsace has great wines. Americans should feel right at home with the wines of Alsace, because it is the only classic French wine region to consistently use varietal labeling. But if the grape name on the label of an Alsace wine makes us comfortable, the bottle shape does not. It is the elongated, flute-shaped bottle that immediately makes Americans think “sweet” and “no thanks.” Both things—the use of varietal names and the tall, thin bottle—are a product of Alsace’s history as a political jump-ball in the border games between France and Germany. The winery names—Trimbach, Hugel, and so on—are indeed Germanic. The noted grapes—Riesling and Gewürztraminer—are, too. But the dominant wine style is quintessentially French, bone dry, with a complexity so subtle it sneaks up on you. To those tasters who discovered, after the Toolbox Tastings in Chapter 2, that they aren’t wowed by oakiness: These wines are for you, because Alsace wines aren’t oaky.
The Grapes
To wine lovers looking for signs of life beyond the varietal world of Chardonnay, Alsace offers a whole new galaxy to explore. The great wines are all whites. Choosing one to buy is as simple as choosing which grape style you would like. Four are known as Alsace’s noble grapes, and each is distinctive, as our tasting will show:
Riesling
Gewürztraminer
Pinot Gris—formerly called Tokay d’Alsace or Tokay Pinot Gris, but the European Community’s wine committee thought this might be confused with Hungary’s famous Tokaji (Toe-KYE) dessert wine
Muscat (MUSS-cat)
Other, more everyday, white varieties are planted for blending and making sparkling wine, as is a tiny bit of red Pinot Noir.
With the grape listed front and center, it is easy to use the label to figure out the wine style. The climate, cool but very sunny, would suggest fruit flavors from the cool to moderate zone of the Flavor Map—ripe apple, pear, citrus, and peach—which is spot on for these wines. And as you may remember from Chapter 2, two of these grapes have an exotic flair—the spicy Gewürztraminer and the floral Muscat.
Here is a tasting comparison to familiarize you with the different grape styles. In previous chapters, we’ve tasted most of these already, so this tasting is really a review for all but the Pinot Gris.
WINE TASTING
The Grapes of Alsace
Something Special—Alsace Grand Cru and the One-of-a-Kind Sweet Wines
Once you fall in love with the wines of Alsace, you may wish to trade up to her specialty wines, which are more expensive (but not outrageous), and quite distinctive. There are three label designations to look for:
Alsace Grand Cru Grand Cru (Grahn CROO) translates roughly as “top-class vineyard,” and there are about fifty that are so designated, based on having the best location and soil for growing quality grapes. Use of the Grand Cru name also obligates a winery to reduce vineyard yields. As we learned in Chapter 3, lower yields make for more concentrated grapes and wine.
Vendange Tardive This translates as late harvest, meaning the grapes were picked later than normal to let them get much riper. Vendange Tardive (Vahn-DAHNJH Tar-DEEV) wines are usually very full-bodied and rich, and sometimes a bit sweet.
Selection de Grains Nobles Literally, “noble berry selection”—this means a wine made from grapes picked berry by berry so as to select only those fully infected with noble rot. Labor intensive? Absolutely. Like other nobly rotten wines (it still sounds funny to say this) that we have talked about, these are expensive, sweet, original, and mind-bendingly