Alsace 2007 and 2006

The 2007 growing season, and the wines. As in most of France, the flowering in the spring of ’07 was much earlier than normal (the earliest ever, according to some producers), but the summer was a mostly mediocre affair, as it was across most of France, and the ripening process was drawn out. A hail storm on June 20 sharply reduced crop levels in many vineyards between Niedermorschwihr and Béblenheim, but elsewhere crop levels were mostly above-average to generous. Although the harvest officially started on September 5—even earlier than in the heatwave summer of 2003—the most serious estates picked at their leisure, under mostly superb conditions and often into mid or even late October.

The biggest mistake in 2007 was to pick too early. With the memory of the rain-plagued 2006 harvest fresh in their minds, when fruit not picked quickly often deteriorated rapidly, many risk-averse growers pulled their fruit before it was thoroughly ripe. Early picking in many instances resulted in clean but lean wines that lack pliancy and depth, not to mention complexity and intensity of flavor. For those who picked at their leisure, often stopping repeatedly for days at a time to wait for more perfect ripeness, the fruit was often able to take full advantage of unusually long hang time, developing great depth of flavor and complexity while retaining healthy acidity and snap. There were a couple of rainy days in September, but the last few days of the month and most of October brought beautiful Indian summer conditions. Many of the most patient producers watched their vines enjoy a leisurely accumulation of high-quality noble rot as summer turned to autumn, and some makers produced good quantities of remarkably rich vendanges tardives and sélection de grains nobles wines. Others reported that their fruit was so clean it was impossible to get a real concentration of noble rot at the end.