The wines landed a few weeks ago so haven’t gotten that many placement yet (summer is always slow, even for whites). A few restaurants in the NYC area carry them, as for retail the Sylvaner is at Dandelion in Brooklyn, the Pinot Blanc at Wine Therapy in Manhattan.
I am doing my Sisyphusian best, representing:
Dirler-Cade - Outrageously good wines that are qualitatively at the very pinnacle with Albert Boxler, Weinbach and a debatable few others. I bring in nearly every bottling they make (not the entry level varietal stuff). Jean Dirler’s best Rieslings are as good as it gets, to my taste, and I love and cellar Jean Boxler’s wines too. I love Jean and Ludivine Dirler dearly, special people…for whatever it is worth, before Kermit represented Albert Boxler, Chatterdon imported both Boxler and Dirler.
Bott Geyl
Deiss
Justin Boxler
Soon to offer Agathe Bursin.
There is much to add to the conversation here, I don’t have the time nor measured patience to do it justice…
Bottom line: there is a wealth of singular quality and diversity, very fair prices ex-cellar, both big names and unknowns…Alsace is majestically beautiful, and has a fascinating patchwork of villages/crus that I am only beginning to know/understand. The american commercial realities are what they are…
As a white wine lover, Alsace has always been one my most purchased categories. I guess I am an oddball because I personally love bone dry Trimbach wines (especially CFE and the Ribeaupierre) AND rich Zind-Humbrecht Riesing/Pinot Gris. Albert Mann, Weinbach, and Josmeyer are three other fine producers that I usually scoop up if I see them on a shelf.
I am not sure why but we have had the exact reverse situation happen here in Ontario, Canada with the LCBO. In 2010 when I first started buying Alsacian, the LCBO would regularly bring in many different wines from many different producers on all price ranges from the smaller and lesser known family and cooperative producers nobody’s ever heard of to the expected big guns such as Trimbach, Weinbach, Marcel Deiss and Zind-Humbrecht. Thanks to their wide breadth and depth of purchasing, I was able to put together a very nice collection of over 50 different Alsacian wines before wrapping it all up. I also became familiar with producers I would otherwise never have bothered with such as Jean-Baptiste Adam, Joseph Cattin, Bott-Geyl, Cave de Ribeauville, Anne Boeckel and many others.
Cue ahead to 2017. The Alsacian shelves at most LCBO’s have a lot, and I mean a lot, of empty space. What few bottles do appear are uninteresting sub $20 supermarket level wines. Certainly none of the heavy hitters. No Trimbach. No Weinbach. No Deiss. No Zind-Humbrecht. No depth either. NO SGNs or VTs. Very few Cremants. It’s a travesty. Their European buyer should be taken out back and shot. It’s like they’re going out of their way to kill off the category.
In that respect, it’s a good thing I closed the collection because if I was still hunting for Alsace wine I would be the one to take out their buyer.
Tran. I agree except for the violence part. Here in BC we have just the low and high end and only a few bottles, mostly from producers nobody has heard of. Although I am drinking a Cremant from Kuhlman Plaz right now that is pretty tasty and sub 20 Canadian.
We have had Marc Chapoutier Alsacian wines lingering on the shelves for about 5 years now, still 2010s.
Alsace wines also face a tough sell in France.
Too much plonk is being sold in supermarkets.
People don’t know whether to expect sweet or dry wines (i.e. Riesling, Muscat and even Gewurztraminer).
And probably too many grape varieties (Riesling, Sylvaner, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Muscat, Pinot Noir).
Regarding the sweet vs. dry Rieslings, it’s not just the decison of the winemaker.
Olivier Humbrecht, producer of dry Rieslings, will make sweeter Rieslings certain years due to weather conditions.
He doesn’t totally control the state of the grapes (botrytized or not) he harvests each year.
Luckily, there is a dry/sweet scale on each of his bottles.
Burn, who makes Rieslings with residual sugar, says that his vineyards’ exposition and location would prevent him from making bone-dry Rieslings.
And he says that Kienzler’s vineyards (and resulting weather conditions) would probably prevent Kienzler from making Rieslings with residual sugar.
Trimbach even ended-up with a Vendanges Tardives Clos Sainte-Hune in 1989! And it was no choice of theirs.
But the trend is definitely towards dry Rieslings.
There are numerous examples of producers who have gone dry (René Muré, just to name one).
It’s fairly easy to find out who makes dry (Mochel, Kienzler, Zind-Humbrecht, Boxler, Bursin, Josmeyer, Muré…) or sweet Rieslings.
The only good thing to come out of this, for consumers, is that it has kept Alsace Riesling prices down.
Khiem
Khiem
This one was quite a comeback:
This.
I had a pretty good 2015 Boeckel Pinot Gris the other day, which is a supermarket wine in my region. Lots of fresh cut pears, light bodied, and very satisfying over 3 days as just a kitchen quaffer. Alsatian wines can be pretty good, but just don’t seem to attract consumer or retailer interest, especially in the mass market.
Sad story.
Maybe the labels should have clear visual depictions of where the wine/grape is on the sweet/dry spectrum, and what kinds of foods line up with that.
Plenty of people who might not like off dry wines (by itself) might find that it goes well with an Indian or Thai curry.
But correcting customers who are ‘wrong’ is a hard way to make a living, I grant.
I used to buy Meyer-Fonne Gewurztraminer Sporen VV by the case from Kermit. Loved that juice. I have a few left grabbing some age.
I’ve always said Alsace should rip up a lot of what they grow and concentrate on Gewurztraminer. Especially with how well it’s works with many Asian foods.
Germany does sweet Riesling as well and usually much better and much more broadly for better prices.
Austria kills them for dry Riesling.
Pinot Gris is generally done better and cheaper in Italy. Sure, richer, denser Pinot Gris is probably best from Alsace but the demand for that is minimal and tough sell beyond a sect of wine geeks.
Pinot Blanc…who really gives a ****.
I’ve had some decent cheaper Pinot Noir from there but that is obviously not something to invest heavily in.
Do Gewurz. It does great. Do a broad variety of it. It can be very versatile in style, giving it a range to play with in terms of palates and pairings.
Most importantly, no one else is doing it. Alsace is never going to prove to the world that it should buy their Rieslings. That market is taken.
I submit that the sense of terroir in Alsatian Rieslings distinguishes it from German sweet and Austrian dry Rieslings.
And there are some nice Alsatian Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris.
Not to say you have to like it, but I would not plant only Gewurztraminer there.
It’s getting better but slowly. It really is a slog, buyers are still petrified but willing to take a (small) chance these days.
Agreed.
Austria kills them for dry Riesling.
Every now and then, but rather seldom. TBH, I think that currently Germany kills both Austria and Alsace with dry Rieslings.
Pinot Gris is generally done better and cheaper in Italy. Sure, richer, denser Pinot Gris is probably best from Alsace but the demand for that is minimal and tough sell beyond a sect of wine geeks.
Just… what? Well, I guess the same thing could be said about Napa and Central Valley.
Pinot Blanc…who really gives a ****.
I’ve had some decent cheaper Pinot Noir from there but that is obviously not something to invest heavily in.
I’ve found that the cheaper Pinot Noirs are usually poor value stuff there. Usually the best ones are those handful pricier ones that aren’t over-oaked.
Do Gewurz. It does great. Do a broad variety of it. It can be very versatile in style, giving it a range to play with in terms of palates and pairings.
And then what should they do with those vineyards where Gewurz really doesn’t fit? Sure, some vineyards could be planted with Gewurztraminer, but since it doesn’t go that well with all the different terroirs of Alsace, you’d either have some rather poor Gewurz filling the markets or then you’d have to come up with some other varieties than Gewurz to fill in. And since 80% of the planted vineyard in Alsace is not Gewurz, there’d have to be quite a lot of replanting to be done.
Finally, Gewurztraminer is a kind of love it or hate it kind of thing, unlike the other varieties. I certainly agree that most of the world’s best Gewurztraminers come from Alsace, but I’m quite certain that if it was such an easy sell, they would’ve jacked up the planted vineyard surface already.
I find that Gewurztraminer is one of those very polarizing grapes where people either love it or immensely dislike it. It would not be a very good thing for a region to concentrate on only one grape variety. Alsace has many lovely wines worth seeking out.
We go through Trimbach Pinot Gris like water
I like Gewurtz, and eat a fair bit of Asian oriented food, but usually stock riesling for that. Most of my family / friends can barely tolerate riesling as it is, and gewurtz is a just a bridge too far for them. I’m not sure I have a single bottle at this point. My sister who even lived in Germany for a decade or so and speaks the language, only consumes riesling if I don’t have an open bubbly for her! I would have thought the years there would have acclimated her to it…
This. They might be very rich, unctuous and ripe for the typical Trimbach style of white wine, but also the same dry and mineral style makes them so feel so wonderfully balanced and structured for Alsatian Pinot Gris. A noticeable portion of the greatest Pinot Gris wines I’ve had have been Trimbach.