I thought this article by Eric Asimov was well-written:
And I think he made an important point about Alsace’s fall from favor:
“The problem was that over time, too many of the historically dry wines of Alsace were sold with residual sugar in them. These wines were sweet, heavy and out of balance, with no indication of sweetness on the label. The problem is not new and much has been done to rectify it. But the perception appears to linger”.
This has been exactly my problem with Alsace, although I’m not sure that “much has been done to rectify it”…
Take Riesling. As opposed to German examples, Alsace Riesling is supposed to be “bone dry”.
Only it isn’t…
Oh, of course, there are some famous producers who do make such wines. But these are not typical of what’s out there. Believe me.
I love Alsace. Only I’ve been burned too often to have many bottles in my cellar. And I must admit an aversion to Gewurtztraminer and Pinot Blanc. But that still leaves plenty of scope – and I do have a soft spot for Sylvaner.
I am very much for a mandatory sweetness code on bottles. That would surely make me come back to the wines of that region, which can be wonderful.
I love Gewurztraminer, and have a soft spot for Pinot Blanc.
I do struggle with lower acid and over-sweet Rieslings, but have learned to focus on particular producers. Trimbach is the obvious one, but there are delicious wines from Dirler-Cade that do not veer into heaviness.
I think that Alsace couldn’t decide what it wanted to be when it grew up, and hence suffered from no one knowing what a given wine would show. I like many of the wines, but the lightly sweet wines designed for regular drinking just don’t hold up compared to a Kabinett or Spatlese. On the other hand, the 1998 Zind Humbrecht Clos Jebsal was one of the greatest dessert wines I have ever had.
I, also, love Alsace and the full range of the producers. (and I’m 1/64th Alsatian.) Why aren’t they more popular? First, Alsace is white. (Yes, I’ve had the spatburgunder and I’ll stick to Burgundy and America for pinot noir, thank you very much.) White is only 10% of the total market, even if much more than 10% of my personal consumption is white. Fortified wines don’t get the love they deserve either, for the same reason.
I think Jay Hack is right on with his comments. The American market wants Riesling to be sweet. I’ve spoken with German producers who flat out said that they don’t even try to sell their dry wines in America anymore because people don’t buy them. It isn’t surprising, then, that Alsace has raised the residual sugar level of the wines that they produce, so they can (try to) sell them in the American market. Like others who have posted, I prefer the dryer Alsatian style but that, apparently, is not what sells. I also think that Alsace would benefit from more producers taking the Deiss approach and making blends, rather than single varietal bottlings of grapes that most of the public has never heard of before, much less tasted. I poured a Deiss Schoenenbourg at Thanksgiving for an ITB friend, who immediately ran out and started stocking it.
Not that I want Alsace prices to go through the roof due to higher demand!
I have been told (but cannot back it up with references) that the problem was not so much Alsace’s indecision, but France and Germany having problems agreeing about which country Alsace should belong to. Depending on its master, Alsace supplied wines to contrast with those otherwise available on the country’s market. So when part of France it historically tended to produce sweeter Germanic wines, but when part of Germany the wines were drier. It does kind of beg the question of what wine style Germany made historically!
Anyway, if that is true, Alsace now seems to be changing strategy and chasing the market’s preference (outside the USA?) for dry wines rather than carving out a niche.
Yup, Alex…couldn’t agree more.
When I started drinking & fell in love w/ Alsace (ca. 1968), the wines were universally dry…not to mention cheap, relative to other
whites. The problem developed when the Z-H’s started getting huge scores out of Monktowm, and the riper.less acidity, some RS wines getting
the biggest scores. And he pronounced OlivierHumbrecht the world’s genuis winemaker. So Z-H pushed those characteristics further & further,
and other winemakers saw the big scores and big $$'s, hopped on the Z-H bandwagon. and soon Alsatian wines became a characterization
of their former self, unrecognizable to those who loved those old-timey wines (of course, Trimbach maintained the course).
Another part of the problem (for me, anyway) is the limited number of wineries who are imported into the USofA. I’m sure there must
be a lot of other Alsatian wineries that are not being imported. It’s very seldom that I stumble upon a new Alsatian producer that I’ve
never heard of before. They’re (the importers) doing a very good job of ferreting out obscure producers in Austria/Slovenia/Italy/Croatia/etc…
but why not Alsace??
I sure pine for the days of A.Willm (ClosGaensbronnel), Doupf au Moulin (Schoenenberg/Eichberg), BottFreres. I was buying those wines all the time. Hardly ever
see those folks around anymore. So Alsace has sorta fallen off my radar when I’m looking for a good (and cheap) white wine.
Tom
I read the article and even went to a link within the article, both proclaiming Alsace wines of a certain timeframe and producer being overly sweet wines. Yet, I am nearly waffling on calling BS on this article as I see no production dates mentioned nor any measured sugar levels referenced. We all can certainly understand having completely dry wines which are based on fruit with longer hang times, hence resulting in very fruity wines which “taste” sweet due to intense fruit and might have less acidity than desired by many due to long hang times. I just find the whole article lacking any scientific support and being very judgmental.
That’s only because you remember what Boxler used to cost. For me, they are very clearly the best wines in Alsace and should command a premium. But I’m stuck in the same rut, I can’t bring myself to buy them at current prices. I drink them in France every time I see them.
For a traditional Alsace dry riesling, I’ve found Pfister to be quite good. Less exalted terroir, but fairly priced and very linear (to use a wine critic term).
We spent a week in Alsace last summer. Didn’t have a car so our wine tasting was limited to where the train stopped. Found some meh stuff and some great stuff. Paul Blanck was fantastic but Domaine Weinbach just blew our socks off.
Speaking personally I’ve never liked the Zind Humbrecht wines. I love Trimbach but a bunch of premoxed bottles have sort of scared me away. I’ve really liked Burn but they vanished from the US market years ago so I haven’t had them in a while. I’ve had some wonderful Dirler Cade but availability was sketchy enough that I eventually forgot about them. Boxler is great but I’m also in the camp that remembers what they used to cost and can’t bring myself to pay the higher prices.
In short I’ve mostly migrated to Austria for my dry rieslings and Germany for my sweet and a small number of dry wines which I like and try to buy but generally fail because they are either available in miniscule quantities or aren’t available at all in the US.
When I started drinking & fell in love w/ Alsace (ca. 1968), the wines were universally dry…not to mention cheap, relative to other
whites. The problem developed when the Z-H’s started getting huge scores out of Monktowm, and the riper.less acidity, some RS wines getting
the biggest scores. And he pronounced OlivierHumbrecht the world’s genuis winemaker. So Z-H pushed those characteristics further & further,
and other winemakers saw the big scores and big $$'s, hopped on the Z-H bandwagon. and soon Alsatian wines became a characterization
of their former self, unrecognizable to those who loved those old-timey wines (of course, Trimbach maintained the course).
I’m not going to agree with this 100%. Monktown also gave high scores to Trimbach as well.
Riesling was long unfashionable. I remember the wine list at Trimbach had multiple vintages of Clos Ste. Hune for sale, relatively inexpensively, and as much as you wanted. And these included the 1986, 1988, 1989 VT, 1990, and 1991.
My impression is that the producers in Alsace were not really interested in making sweeter/big wines. but were responding to what was in their vineyards at some point. (Which is a main tenant of “biodynamie”.) They wanted better balanced wines, but were puzzled, in the early part of the new century, about how to get them more balanced, without contriving them.
In my view, Deiss’ approach, which is a response to Deiss’ financial interests mainly, makes a complicated region which is hard to sell, even more problematic. He got the authorities to allow him to make and sell his “field blend” wines legally as “grand cru” when the system is geared to varieties of grapes, not field blends…and the grand cru is limited to a few varieties, not all of them. Deiss’ field blends are limited by what’s growing in them…and little more. So, he got the rules changed to bend around his needs and financial motives. How anyone can see this as a “benefit” to anyone except Deiss is beyond me.
I love Alsace wines, particularly Boxler, Trimbach and Barmes-Buecher…and marvel each time I open one, which I do frequently. But, the category has never and likely never will sell well in the US for reasons mentioned above (including lack of sweetness indicators) and confusion with German wines. Every 5 years or so, someone writes that is about to change. It never does.
I am not optimistic that this will ever change, particularly when those who seek to bastardize the products and pervert the AOC system charge the highest prices for those wines.
As an importer, we took a gamble on a small producer of biodynamic Alsatian wines this year (http://vincent-fleith.com/) despite my better instincts. The price was right and the quality outstanding. I knew it would be a very tough sell, but even I wasn’t prepared for the resistance. Buyers love tasting the wines, they’ll happily drink samples, but there’s very little follow-up (though we’ve seen a spike in Brooklyn and interest in Boston, so there’s that).
A big reason you don’t see much Alsace aside from the big names is that buyers aren’t willing to take a chance on them. Consumers are also so used to the idea that Riesling=Sweet that it’s a tough go, despite, as many retailers will tell you, “asking for dry but drinking sweet”. No one wants to admit they like sweet wine, so Alsace gets lost in the mix. This is actually one reason we brought in more Sylvaner and Pinot Blanc than Riesling (and Grand Cru Steinweg at that).
Still, the moment I mention Alsace to my customers, you can see the defenses going up. Everyone is petrified of trying to sell it, no matter the quality.
