I went to The Age of Alsace at this year's Aspen Food & Wine Classic, where there were six great wines on the table, two of them fabulous suprises, but the whole group made it worth the trip.

The Alsace Wine Board facilitated the seminar and Andrea Robinson--dynamic as ever--led the audience through six wines: Crémant d'Alsace, Sylvaner, Riesling, two Gewürztraminers, and a Pinot Gris. I was glad to hear Mrs. Robinson's perspectives on the wines, as it is always good to hear fresh ideas. We started with the Lucien Albrecht NV Crémant d'Alsace (which was one of my wedding wines!), and it was a delicious as ever, and a perfect eye-opener. All of the other wines were Grands Crus (or the producer's equivalent), which I didn't expect, but even so, these were five of the world's finest wines of their type. The two surprises were the Grand Cru Sylvaner from Albert Seltz (the same wine and vintage I tasted several years ago, and for which I vouched here), and the 1999 Schlumberger Pinot Gris Grand Cru Spiegel. Add to these a few of my more easily obtainable favorites: Trimbach's 2005 Frédéric Émile and 2004 Cuvée des Seigneurs de Ribeaupierre and Hugel's Gewürz Jubilee, and it was how any wine lover would be thrilled to start the day, but for an Alsace nut...well, it was perfect.

Here are some specifics on the wines:

Lucien Albrecht NV Crémant d'Alsace
Still one of my favorite values in sparkling wine. I could drink this all morning, but past a certain point it will no longer be an eye-opener. Lime scented shortbread on the nose, lip-smacking on the palate, as usual.

Albert Seltz 2005 Sylvaner Grand Cru Zotzenberg
Concentrated apricot scent--preserves and dried apricots (without the oxidative elements inherent to dried fruit), with a lance of five-spice. All of this comes together to be incredibly suggestive of a Jayne Mansfield-type of physicality...i.e., really curvy. The flavors are congruent with the aromas, and it is full-bodied, but the honeyed elements of a mature wine are more prominent than they were aromatically. The retro-olfactory experience magnifies this honey on the nose, as found in the first sniff after the first sip. What a beautiful wine--quite different from the last time I had it in 2008.

Trimbach 2005 Riesling Cuvée Frédéric Émile
Spectacular wine--aromas of salty lime, bay, and white tea. Hard to stop sniffing this one. Vivid flavors that draw on the aromas, deeper and longer though, with a medium body and long-term, fun sense of Riesling essence.

Trimbach 2004 Gewürztraminer Cuvée des Seigneurs de Ribeaupierre
Truly one of the greatest Gewürztraminers in the world. Redolent of rose petals, honeyed green olives (in the background) and a bit of rosemary. Bold, big wine that is NOT READY to drink. Its alcohol shows a bit on the edges of the tongue--I have long associated this with this wine when it is still young. Fabulously light color, especially for Gewürz--will be great in a couple of years.

Hugel 2007 Gewürztraminer Jubilee
Feisty, rich, floral wine with a randy sense of its fruit and less delicacy than the Trimbach. Fennel colors the lychee/rose elements such that as it sits in the glass it becomes a new thing altogether...more like tarragon. This one is ready, and if you've got some, drink it down with great relish.

Schlumberger 1999 Pinot Gris Grand Cru Spiegel
Savory scents of mushrooms and corn silks with a wonderfully honeyed background. Excellent wine--residual sugar has been absorbed into the whole of the wine, and it is quite long-toned--mushrooms keep it going with a salty (almost brothy) backside and a great saucisson finish. Dynamite, extraordinary wine.

Popularity: 19% [?]

This June 15-17, if you are among the lucky few to have tickets for the Aspen Food & Wine Classic, I hope you will put "The Age of Alsace" on your schedule. There are two sessions on the schedule, one on Friday morning, and the other on Saturday morning. Andrea Robinson will be leading the seminar, which will no doubt be a fun and edifying event for anyone interested in white wine, whether or not you know much about the wines of Alsace. I have no idea what wines will be included in the tasting, but I imagine you'll get to taste Zind-Humbrecht's Zind, which would be an ideal wine for such an occasion. It's a good bet that wines from such other fine producers as Hugel, Gustav Lorentz, Trimbach, and Weinbach will be on the table as well.

Hope to see you there!

Popularity: 22% [?]

An unusual Grand Cru in that the grape that is perhaps its greatest exponent is Sylvaner. There are not many vineyards devoted to Sylvaner in Alsace at all, let alone Grand Cru real estate, but the Sylvaner from Zotzenberg can be absolutely electrifying, and there are not enough of them that ever make it to the States. It is situated almost in the midst of the town, as is not uncommon throughout Alsace, but it doesn't define the landscape in quite the same way as such dramatically located vineyards as Schlossberg or Rangen. But let's back up...

The Cru and Its Grapes
This excellent Bas-Rhin cru has been widely regarded so since the 16th Century (according to the locals), though its heritage stretches back to at least the mid-14th Century. Zotzenberg's fame was such that--like Kaefferkopf and Sporen (among others)--it's wines were sold under the vineyard name by the beginning of the 20th Century, long before the INAO began delimiting viticultural areas. Its 90 acres of limestone and marl stretches from west to east in graceful amphitheater-like slope on the north side of the beautiful village of Mittelbergheim. Alongside its famous Sylvaner, I have also tasted excellent Zotzenberg Riesling and Gewürztraminer. I have heard anecdotally that Pinot Gris performs quite well here, but I have never seen or heard of a Muscat in production from Zotzenberg, so I do not know if it occupies any real estate. Given Muscat's relatively small percentage of Alsace's overall vine population, it would be safe to surmise that if it is planted in Zotzenberg, it holds a miniscule place there.

The Finest Wines of Zotzenberg (insofar as my experience tells it...)
The export market, alas, represents too few producers of great wines from this cru. In other words, there are simply too few producers whose wines are exported at all. While out of context that statement may be true for Alsace as a whole--demand for Alsace wine remains stubbornly static--this is a cru whose wines should attract attention because of the Grand Cru Sylvaner. The body of wine lovers whose fascination with such things is large enough to support multiple producers in the marketplace, but the only producer I have found in the market recently was Albert Seltz. I have been lucky enough to have a Gewürztraminer (2006) and Sylvaner (2005), both of which were excellent. I have also been thrilled by the wines of Domaine Boeckel, whose wines wines have intermittently been available in the U.S. Among many highlights of my last trip to Alsace were three wines from Boeckel: a banana-butterscotch-rose inflected Gewürztraminer (2007) with a long, mouth-watering finish; a corpulent Riesling (2007) redolent of orange and bergamot that reminded me of the physicality and vividness of a Geisberg or Rangen Riesling (though without the fathomlessness inherent in Rieslings from those crus); and a spectacularly effulgent Sylvaner (2007) whose crystalline minerality dovetailed nicely with elements of citrus and lentils.

Popularity: 20% [?]

There are legendary estates that get profiled in books with titles like Great Wine Estates of the World or something similarly aggrandizing, and there can be no doubt that an estate like Zind-Humbrecht would be counted among these. There are a handful of producers in Alsace that are legitimately in the same top peer group, and I find that wines from such estates tend to occupy their own stylistic realm. Perhaps it would be better to say that, while there may be similarities among two dozen first-rate producers, the top echelon of this group makes wines that are at once so familiar and so compellingly idiosyncratic that one cannot help but think of these estates first when thinking about the region. These idiosyncrasies naturally cause a given taster to prefer one over another, but it is difficult to imagine anyone finding a way to dispute their greatness, especially that of Zind-Humbrecht.

Zind-Humbrecht is situated just outside Turckheim in a beautiful, modern-styled winery. The upstairs tasting room looks out over the Herrenweg (which surrounds the winery) to the hillside where the Heimbourg and Clos Jebsal vineyards are situated just to the east of the Grand Cru Brand. If you turn around, you can see the hillside that is home to the Grand Cru Hengst, along with the Clos Häuserer and Rotenberg vineyards. The only vineyards not visible, at least in part, from the winery are the Grands Crus Goldert and Rangen to the south (in Gueberschwihr and Thann respectively), and the Clos Windsbuhl to the north (in Hunawihr).

The Wines
If there is a fault with Zind-Humbrecht, perhaps it is that they do not produce a "classic" or "generic" range of wines to act as an introduction to the estate. That said, they do make wines that sell for less than $30, including the Zind (classified as a Vin de Table because it contains Chardonnay! And no joke--go buy this wine!), the Riesling Herrenweg de Turckheim and the Pinot Gris Calcaire. I would love to see a $20 Muscat at some point, but perhaps market forces aren't compelling enough. The pedigree of the wines IS compelling though, for those concerned with this sort of thing: the Zind and Pinot Gris Calcaire both contain declassified fruit from young vines in the Clos Windsbuhl. Zind-Humbrecht has been fully biodynamic for many years now, and Olivier Humbrecht, who took over from his father Léonard in the late 1980s is a master of biodynamic farming and the result of his gifts in the vineyards is a great gift to our wine glasses.

The wines from Zind-Humbrecht have, in the aggregate, intense varietal character expressed through sublime aromas, concentrated and unadulterated flavors that are colored by their individual terroirs. The wines from Zind-Humbrecht have in the past--as often as not--had a significant amount of residual sugar. I imagine that sugar levels have always been dictated largely by the nature of the wine in any given vintage, but I have never found these wines out of balance--sugar or no--and many have absorbed the sugar as they age (meaning that the wines come in to focus in the cellar--acids and sugars acting in an ethereal harmony), so the sugar's contribution is less to sweetness and more to texture and overall profile. However, when I visited recently, the impression I got from tasting through the portfolio was that the wines seemed uniformly drier, and this is intentional, as it turns out.

This estate is a bastion of experimentation, and was in the vanguard of working with Chardonnay as a single variety wine. The Clos Windsbuhl Chardonnay is one of the most amazing expressions of this ubiquitous grape I've ever encountered, and is clearly a wine built for long-term aging (in the vein of the great White Burgundies of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s) with many subtle layers of flavor and complexity. The Humbrechts are also working with the Clos Jebsal with the goal of releasing late-harvest wines from its slopes every vintage, though occasionally the vintage doesn't cooperate, and they release a regular Pinot Gris (albeit rather extreme in its crafty, nuanced display of intensity).

Ongoing Legacy
The Humbrechts have resuscitated some of the great vineyards of Alsace, including a large portion of the Grand Cru Rangen. One of the greatest vineyards in the world, especially for Riesling, Rangen was under-served by its tenants until Leonard Humbrecht bought a plot and started making great wine on this steeply sloping vineyard that dominates the skyline of the small town of Thann. An expensive parcel of land to farm (it has to be worked entirely by hand and mule), it nonetheless pays dividends to those who work with its fruit. Zind-Humbrecht remains the greatest producer of wine from this vineyard.

And as I said before, the wines from Zind-Humbrecht are all grown while adhering to biodynamic principles. I don't imagine this will be an issue over the longer term, despite the ever more extreme terms that some of biodynamics' most prickly adherents try to dictate to others who use the same practices but are less fanatical (an ongoing issue, as I discovered in conversations with several biodynamic producers in France recently). Olivier Humbrecht talks most intelligently about the more mystical elements of biodynamics, and if he's a fanatic, he's got a great poker face. He sounds like someone who has embraced biodynamics after a liberal (in the good old fashioned, non-political sense of the word) investigation of it, rather than someone who is enchanted by what appears, on the surface, to be hocus-pocus, and there are enough of those people in the world already.

The spirit of intelligent inquisitiveness that clearly powers this estate to greatness should be an inspiration to all who make wine. It's hard for most retailers and consumers to remember Alsace, but I've found that wine producers from around the world keep tabs on what's happening there, and I don't doubt that these producers follow Zind-Humbrecht's activities closely...as should you!

Popularity: 19% [?]

Pinot Gris in Alsace is not like the average Pinot Grigio from Italy. Pinot Gris doesn't lend itself to mass production, but that doesn't stop many Italian producers from making an ocean of Pinot Grigio, which is often tasty, but ultimately simple wine. Certainly you can find high-minded producers in Italy making Pinot Grigio that has great majesty, and this is more akin to the grand, sweeping, resplendent Pinot Gris found at good estates in Alsace.

What's in a Name?
Once known locally as Tokay or Tokay d'Alsace, EC considerations forced the combo-moniker of Tokay-Pinot Gris. Subsequent EU law forced Alsatians to drop their regionalism altogether so that no one would confuse it with Hungarian Tokaji. Not that anyone would, but this is what happens when you bring European countries together politically. So now it is known, on bottles at least, simply as Pinot Gris.

However it is known, this pink-berried mutation of Pinot Noir is responsible for some richly textured and aromatic (though not aromatic, as you'd find with Muscat or Gewürztraminer) wines when vine yields are limited. It excels, in a different way than does Riesling, across the sweetness spectrum, but it is most often found as a dry, deeply colored wine with significant corpulence. Pinot Gris runs far behind Riesling and Gewürztraminer in vine population, but many of the new generation of producers believe that it is the way of the future, and plantings of it continue to increase. If its success in Oregon and New Zealand is any indication, then these producers are right.

Pinot Gris in Late Harvest Form
Of the varieties in Alsace that excel as late-harvest wines (i.e., Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Pinot Gris), Pinot Gris is perhaps the most consistent. This is curious, considering that it is just as mercurial as Pinot Noir in the vineyard. The number of vineyards dedicated solely to Pinot Gris, and expressly late harvest, continues to grow. Pinot Gris is possessed of a naturally strong acidity, which makes it a regular candidate for late harvest wines in both Vendange Tardive and Sélection de Grains Nobles. Vendanges Tardives of Pinot Gris are found in both dry and sweet styles (though sweeter wines are certainly more common), and they are incredibly rich and velvety, more tropical and exotic than regularly classified forms, and with some maturity they take on a buttered mirabelle quality. The levels of grandness increase exponentially with the Sélection de Grains Nobles, as the thin-skinned Pinot Gris is the "noble" variety most susceptible to botrytis. Pinot Gris usually retains excellent acid levels in this form, and this combined with the sugar and the noble rot leads to a dazzling wine that is very commonly full of peach, butter toffee, cream, and spice flavors.

Pinot Gris with Food
Pinot Gris has two great qualities that make it such a successful food wine: attractive perfume that isn't overpowering and excellent body and acidity. It is with rich, savory foods that it shines most brightly, and is a worthy replacement for many hearty red wines, should you seek to have a white alternative. It works so well in this regard that you could serve it with Pot Roast (or as the Alsatians do, with Baeckeoffe) and it would go perfectly well.

Popularity: 26% [?]

In the Grand Cru of Goldert, Alsace has its own "golden slope." If Burgundy's Côte d'Or is famous for extraordinary Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Goldert is famous for its Gewurztraminer, Muscat, and Pinot Gris, though all four 'noble' varieties (and some Pinot Noir) are planted in Goldert.

Brief Summary of a Long History
Goldert has quite a history, as its reknown stretches back to the 8th Century. Fast-forward to the French Revolution, and its great repute continued: one apocryphal source of oral history holds that Goldert was one of Thomas Jefferson's favorite sources of wine (he had so many...). Goldert is located to the north of Gueberschwihr, its slopes facing east. Its location, which is about 15 minutes southwest of Colmar, is in the center of the extraordinary stretch of land that is the Haut-Rhin. The foundation of the vineyard is a limestone subsoil covered by a calcareous topsoil in which clay and sandstone are mingled.

Grape Varieties in Use in Goldert
It has long been particularly esteemed for its Gewürztraminer and Muscat, but Pinot Gris from Goldert can be as extraordinary as from any other great source. Riesling fares least well, but when conditions are right, Goldert Riesling can be up to Grand Cru quality.

Top Growers in Goldert
My experience with wines from this Grand Cru rest mostly with the wines of Ernest Burn (all four noble varieties), and the Gewürztraminer and Muscat from Zind-Humbrecht. The wines from Zind-Humbrecht have been consistently available to me, so I have had a better chance to follow their qualitative stature, and they do not fail to inspire. Zind-Humbrecht also pulled off that rarest of feats when they produced a Muscat Vendange Tardive from Goldert in 1995. Ernest Burn and Goldert are practically synonymous--Burn's Clos St.-Imer is one of the great Clos in Alsace, and the wines are astonishing. I have not had the opportunity to have them since the 2004 vintage, but if history is any indication, Burn is still the greatest exponent of this terroir. I have also found Maurice Schueller's Gewürztraminer and Muscat to be excellent, but I have not had the opportunity to follow them on a regular basis.

Popularity: 8% [?]