Alsace 2023: Astonishing Whites and Splendid Reds from a Complex Year

BY ANNE KREBIEHL, MW | APRIL 1, 2025

Dry, dry, dry—this is how Alsatian vignerons remember the 2023 vintage. Once again, soil types were predictors of success. Sandy, gravelly sites on the plain suffered, and steep, stony sites of granite and sandstone struggled. However, more water-retentive limestone and marl soils generally fared well. Whether a vineyard got some respite from a refreshing shower after a thunderstorm was purely down to luck. But dryness was just one aspect of this complex year. Sévérine Schlumberger said, “Two thousand twenty-three was a vintage like I had never experienced before. It felt like four different vintages in one year.” Jean Dirler of Domaine Dirler-Cade used the term “curious” to describe 2023, with “several periods of heat and drought and several periods of cooler weather, changing all the time.”

Hoar frost settled in the Vosges mountains in January 2025, pictured here with the sun breaking through the clouds.

The Course of the Year

Spring was especially dry, with just 16.5 mm of rain falling in the first three months of the year. Compare that to 63 mm in 2022 and 74 mm in 2024 for the same period. Cooler temperatures ensured a later budburst, which meant that most growers escaped April frosts. Hot weather during flowering was a positive for Pinot varieties, which had plentiful yields, but it also meant coulure (poor fruit-set) for Riesling. Dryness really took hold in summer, with June 2023 the second hottest since records began in 1931. The warm weather also posed oidium (powdery mildew) pressure. July remained warm but saw some showers, with August cooling down and bringing much-needed rain. September was the hottest in Alsace since 1947. The Indian summer carried into October with summery temperatures, culminating in seemingly never-ending rain.

“There was a real spring,” said Mélanie Pfister in Dahlenheim, located close to Strasbourg in the north of Alsace. Pfister noted a slow awakening of nature, thankfully without the risk of spring frost, as a cool April delayed the vines. She recalled, “Everything went pretty fast from May onwards. May and June were really dry. We planted new plots and had to water them five times. In two months, we did not even have 40 mm of rain, something that I had never experienced before. Neither had my father. Fortunately, there was no blockage of ripening because showers in late July and early August brought relief, right before a late-August heatwave and a warm September with temperatures exceeding 30°C.”

Charles Sparr in Wettolsheim (just outside Colmar in central Alsace) described a “relatively dry and mild winter,” with a cooler March delaying vegetation beyond any spring frost danger. He added, “Spring was quite warm, and flowering started in the second week of June in hot weather. In July, we saw that some vineyards started to have some dry stress. Some sites suffered, especially on sandy and granitic soils, but all the limestone sites were in good shape.” A cooler August followed, which, according to Sparr, “saved the harvest.”  Further south, in Bergholtz, Jean Dirler remembers his thermometer reading 38°C on July 9 and nights cooling down to 8°C in August. Despite these extremes, no producers reported slow ferments. On the contrary, fermentation posed no problems at all in 2023, pointing to balanced, healthy fruit.

Mélanie Pfister is one of Alsace's young stars. Her Pinot Noir Rahn is particularly seductive.