Alsace 2020s and 2021s: Just like Janus

BY ANNE KREBIEHL MW | APRIL 20, 2023

Despite being one of Europe’s and France’s most classic wine regions, Alsace has two faces, one looking forward and the other condemned to only ever see the past – like the Roman god Janus. Alsace can deliver wines that are the very pinnacle of their varietal expression, embedded in and resulting from an ancient wine culture, yet are absolutely contemporary, expressive of place and vintage. But, as a recent tasting illustrated, Alsace also produces wines that are stuck in the past, where clumsy sweetness, alcoholic strength or extraction are still mistaken for expression, where some of the folkloric tweeness that spoils much of the region’s real and historic beauty seems to have seeped into the wine. There is a sea of technically correct but uninspiring wines between these two poles. While the latter is true for most wine regions, Alsace is simultaneously at the forefront of change and lagging behind.

The cloister at the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar.

The Status Quo

There are a good number of reasons for these two faces. One is that Alsace is France’s number one region for direct sales, with a quarter of domestic sales made directly at the cellar door. When you consider that the Alsace Wine Route, inaugurated as a tourist attraction in 1953 and the oldest in France, predates the creation of the official Alsace appellation in 1962 by just under a decade, you realize that the thousands of visitors, chiefly from the neighboring countries of Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, love to load up their cars with Alsace wine as they take in the picturesque villages and the historic monuments of Colmar. Then there is the predominance of co-operatives. (Not that these cannot excel, but exceptions usually prove the rule.) According to figures by CIVA, of the roughly 4,000 Alsace grape growers, 48% are cooperative members and 35% sell wine in bulk, which leaves independent wineries at just 17%. Then there is the unassailed domestic success of Crémant d’Alsace, which accounts for about a quarter of the region’s total output. For 2022, the figure was 24%, but it has been as high as 27%. With a few exceptions included in this report, Crémant d’Alsace is a simple, dry, cheerful traditional method fizz. This, in turn, explains why plantings of Pinot Blanc (3,336ha/8,249 acres) exceed those of Riesling (3,219ha/7,954 acres). Indeed, Crémant d’Alsace is France’s fizz of choice – right after Champagne – and of France’s eight Crémant regions, none other produces as much as Alsace. It is clear that these factors skew the outlook of a region. Much wine is produced for domestic supermarkets still peddling an old-fashioned style. The real tragedy is that they also skew how Alsace wine is perceived worldwide. Because when you look at the lay of the land, the composition of the soils and the uniqueness of this twin culture, informed over centuries by the influences of two nations, you cannot fail to grasp that this is a prime, even pre-destined wine country. Thomas Muré of Domaine du Clos du Saint Landelin illustrates this perfectly: “Our father often told us [him and his sister Véronique] that a bottle of Rangen de Thann used to cost the same as grand cru Chambertin, 140 Francs, but in the mid-1980s, things started changing.” This price gap is now wider than ever – a loss of prestige indeed.

Anne Trimbach with her father Pierre Trimbach.

The Lay of the Land