2011 and 2010 Alsace Wines

Good news (and some not) in Alsace wine.  For the better part of the last decade of the 20th century, many Alsatian whites were plagued by the difficult combination of high alcohol and significant residual sugar, a situation made worse in low-acid vintages, which rendered these traditionally food-friendly wines difficult to pair with most modern-day cuisine.  While alcohol levels remain high in some cases (better Alsatian whites can still clock in at 15%, though less frequently today than just 10 to 15 years ago), the wines of recent vintages are drier and show much better balance.

This is good news, because no other wine region offers so many different and equally delicious white wines.  Alsace produces the world's best dry rieslings and the best dry and sweet gewürztraminers of all, but you'll also find some of the best dry muscats and sylvaners anywhere.  Pinot blanc can be very good too.  Alsace does these less famous grapes especially well; they can offer unique and highly food-flexible taste experiences.  Even better, wines made from these grapes are relatively inexpensive compared to top Alsatian riesling, gewurztraminer and pinot gris. 

Dry muscat from Alsace, almost always a blend of the fuller-bodied muscat d'Alsace and the more perfumed muscat ottonel, is perfect with shellfish such as oysters.  And as good as some German and Alto Adige sylvaners can be, they simply can't hold a candle to the best from Alsace, which are often the product of extremely old vines (a 50-year average vine age is common) and are ideal with difficult pairings such as asparagus and artichoke as well as with simply prepared fish dishes.  Unfortunately, the surface under vine devoted to sylvaner in Alsace is dwindling:  down to 4% today, compared to 15% in the '80s.  This sorry situation is the consequence of the ill-conceived law (originally of 1962, then "fine-tuned" over the years) that decreed that only gewurztraminer, muscat, riesling and pinot gris were  "noble" grapes (pinot noir was originally in the group too, only to be dropped later) and worthy of grand cru status.  Hence, sylvaner vines (and chasselas as well) were ripped up from grand cru sites since these wines would not benefit from the grand cru's name on the label, which helps wines sell for higher prices.

The net result was that the four "noble" varieties were planted everywhere (according to Felix Meyer of Meyer-Fonné, in 1976 pinot gris represented only 3% of the Alsace's surface under vine, while today it is 15%), even in unsuitable sites, so that today we have many insipid pinot gris bottlings (especially) made from supposedly hallowed sites when in fact everyone would have been better off sticking to well-made, old-vine sylvaner or chasselas.  Alsatian pinot blanc (actually, almost always a blend of pinot blanc and the more aromatic auxerrois, also called pinot auxerrois) has no such popularity problems, as these two grapes are used for Crémant d'Alsace, the local sparkling wine made in the manner of Champagne (where the secondary refermentation takes place in the bottle).  As Crémant d'Alsace represents almost 40% of Alsace's wine production, and annual sales are forever increasing (by roughly 3% in 2010, and 6% per annum in preceding years), pinot blanc is clearly here to stay.  Readers ought to know that non-sparkling pinot blanc is also popular:  as its taste profile resembles that of unoaked chardonnay, it has almost ubiquitous palate appeal.  Some Alsatian examples are so rich they can stand up even to white meat dishes.

One other important characteristic of Alsace is that contrary to French tradition, Alsace has historically sold its wines by the name of the grape variety, a practice documented as early as 1477.  Though a few wines today are labeled only by a famous site, such Mambourg or Schoenenbourg, the overwhelming majority of Alsatian wine is still characterized by varietal labeling, which makes the wines easier for consumers to understand and thus easier to sell.  Unfortunately, every wine estate tends to make a slew of wines from each variety and from multiple sites, which can make for a confusing situation--as well as for unbelievably long tasting days, as Steve Tanzer and I know only too well.  Furthermore, for every vigneron who's keen on reducing the number of wines he offers, in an effort to make his portfolio easier to grasp for the uninitiated, you'll find another one absolutely driven by the need to broadcast an aspect of a particular and highly finite terroir.  The result:  yet another new vineyard-designated wine on top of the 30 or so bottlings he or she already produces.  While this may be total nirvana for wine geeks such as myself, it is not ideal for beginners or casual wine lovers looking to make sense of the bewildering array of Alsace wines for sale.