Appreciating Alsace’s many charms

Every couple of years, the wine writers of the world decide it is time for you to discover Alsace. The wines are wonderful. The prices are reasonable. What’s not to like? But still you resist.

As a result, Alsatian wines are as scarce in Southern California as restaurants serving authentic choucroute.

That’s bad news for Alsace, but good news for you. Because Alsatian wines are hard to sell, retailers stock only a few of the very best. And for the same reason, they can charge only relatively modest amounts.

As a result, you can choose among the top bottlings from a region that has been making great wine for more than 1,000 years, and the vast majority will cost less than $40 a bottle. Astonishingly good wines are available for less than $15.

“This is still one of the most underrated areas around,” Opaline’s David Rossoff says. He adds that when putting together the list for his restaurant, he wanted to feature some lesser-known white wines, expecting they would be Germans or Austrians. But after tasting the wines blind, he ended up with mostly Alsatians. “When it comes to the price-quality ratio,” he says, “these wines are incredible bargains.”

In a recent tasting of nearly two dozen Alsatian wines with Rossoff, Beverage Warehouse’s Barry Herbst, Times acting food editor Leslie Brenner, columnist David Shaw and staff writer Corie Brown, there was hardly a bottle in which we couldn’t find something to applaud.

The best place to start your tasting expedition is Riesling, probably the region’s greatest grape and certainly the one with which most wine drinkers have at least a passing familiarity.

Alsatian Rieslings share a certain floral quality with their German neighbors, but there are differences as well. The Alsatians tend to be leaner, more minerally and more delicate than the German Rieslings, which have more rounded honey and fruit qualities. Think of them as more silver than gold.

Or maybe more common elements would be more accurate. A great dry Alsatian Riesling has a flinty, stony edge that can make you think of drinking from a cold stream running through a wildflower meadow.

With its tart acidity, Riesling is one of the great food wines, able to match foods from sole to steak, depending on how it is vinified. Because the wines we tasted seemed a little more delicate than the norm, they are probably best served with foods at the lighter end of the spectrum.

The next wine to investigate is probably Gewurztraminer, alternately loved and hated because of its distinctive flamboyant nose of rosewater and spice. Rossoff says these are tough sells at his restaurant. “Do customers shy away because they don’t know the grape or because they know it and don’t like it?” we asked. Definitely the latter, he said.

Still, the half-dozen Alsatian Gewurztraminers we tasted, ranging from entry level to top of the line, were notably restrained. In fact, in some cases they could have been mistaken for richer Rieslings, with a slightly syrupy texture and just a bit more clove on the nose.

The cliche match for Gewurztraminer is Asian food, the theory being that you match spice with spice and that the slight sweetness and fuller body stands up well to saltiness. But it would also be a great match for choucroute.

Probably the hardest grape for the tasting panel to get a grip on was Pinot Gris (frequently labeled Tokay-Pinot Gris), which in Alsace produces monster wines of great density. It seems impossible that this is the same grape that produces the light, flowery Pinot Grigio of Northern Italy.

These wines ranged from slightly off-dry to full-blown honey (including a couple that seemed to have a trace of botrytis character -- that slight burr at the back of the throat you find in great Sauternes). All of this without a hint on the label as to which style the wine might be.

Still, these were amazing wines in their distinctive way. The best had an expressive minerality and taut acidity that pulled together to make a stunning package -- once you got used to it.

Indeed, a few connoisseurs of Alsatian wine hold that Pinot Gris is the region’s truly great varietal, particularly when it comes to aging. Still, for newcomers the unpredictable range of sweetness makes it difficult to approach.

Furthermore, it’s hard to imagine what dishes to serve these Pinot Gris with. Probably the best matches would be foods with really emphatic flavors of their own. Strong cheeses (particularly semisoft, such as Muenster) are one obvious choice. Foie gras is another -- at last, an alternative to all that Sauternes!

All-important terroir

Our tasting focused on wines that were -- at least ostensibly -- dry. The truly sweet wines of Alsace are among the region’s most prized. The labels of those would include the words vendange tardive (late harvest) or selection de grains nobles, made from individually selected bunches of botrytised grapes.

There are other grape varieties grown in Alsace as well. Pinot Noir is the only red variety; there are also significant plantings of Muscat, Sylvaner and Pinot Blanc. These white varieties typically produce lighter, more floral wines. In addition, some growers bottle blends of grapes. Most frequently labeled Edelzwicker, these serve as the common table wines of the region.

However, at least one winemaker, the maverick Marcel Deiss, bottles a field blend of grapes that he believes best expresses the nature of the specific vineyard in which they were raised. The wine he calls simply “Grasberg” is predominantly Riesling, but with added heft and minerality from Pinot Gris and -- depending on the vintage -- even a little Gewurztraminer for spice.

Indeed, the concept of terroir, of wines tasting of specific vineyard sites, is all-important in Alsace. This can lead to wines of amazing character and individuality.

On the other hand, it can lead to labels that are a maze of grapes, place names and ripeness levels, nearly Germanic in their confusion.

For the casual drinker, probably the best solution is to pick a few top producers and taste among their entry-level wines. You can find very fine basic bottlings from Trimbach and Hugel for between $10 and $15.

Once you’ve acquired a rough familiarity with the grape varieties, you can pick out one producer and taste through its various designations.

In our tasting, it was fascinating to compare Domaine Weinbach’s basic Gewurztraminer with its “Cuvee Theo,” which comes entirely from a single vineyard. As appealing as the first wine was -- slightly sweet and spicy, with a hint of something that smelled like soil from a well-tended herb garden -- the “Theo” was a distinct step up in class, well knit and elegant with a long, lean finish.

There are several other producers worth investigating, most notably Zind-Humbrecht, widely regarded as the classiest of the region. They are well known for their Rieslings, particularly the Clos Ste. Hune and Clos Windsbuhl, and their Gewurztraminers from the Herrenweg-Turckheim vineyard. Their vineyard-designated wines tend to be the most expensive Alsatians, costing $50 and up.

The panel was also impressed by the wines of Schoffit, Albert Mann and Rolly Gassmann. (As delightful as it would be to think that the latter name belonged to a real person, alas, in reality it is the joining of two surnames.)

In an earlier tasting of organic wines, Alsatian producer Marc Kreydenweiss stood out. Indeed, the movement seems to be spreading rapidly in Alsace. Zind-Humbrecht, Deiss and Weinbach all follow biodynamic practices, along with Domaine Ostertag and JosMeyer.

Finding all of these producers can be a bit of a challenge. Most good stores will carry half a dozen Alsatian wines, hardly representative of what is available. We found the best collections at Wine House in West L.A., which carries more than 25 bottlings, and the Wine Exchange in Orange, which lists a whopping 85 choices on its website.

With selections like that, if you don’t discover Alsatian wines this time around, you have only yourself to blame.

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The top of a very fine selection

The 20 dry Alsatian wines we tasted were almost uniformly excellent, especially considering their prices. These are the ones that particularly impressed us:

Riesling

2001 Hugel Riesling ($15.99): A very good introduction to the grape as it is grown in Alsace. Very pretty and flowery with just a hint of sweetness. Great balance and complexity for the price.

1999 Rolly Gassmann Riesling “Reserve” ($16.99): A little more serious wine with restrained mineral flavors and firm acidity.

2002 Domaine Weinbach Riesling “Cuvee Theo” ($24.99): A stunner with a honeyed, floral nose balanced by salty, spicy flavors.

Gewurztraminer

2001 Schoffit Gewurztraminer “Cuvee Caroline” ($19.99): Big and rich; tastes of rosewater, banana and mixed baking spices.

2002 Domaine Weinbach Gewurztraminer ($24.99): Pretty and delicate with a whiff of apricot; somewhat spicy.

2002 Domaine Weinbach Gewurztraminer “Cuvee Theo” ($30.99): A great wine with rich texture; very minerally and extracted with a clean, tart finish.

Pinot Gris

2001 Albert Mann Pinot Gris “Furstentum Grand Cru” ($24.99): Sweet and fleshy; exotic tasting with a distinct petroleum note in the nose.

2000 Dirler Pinot Gris “Schimberg” ($22.99): Really a fat, weighty wine, but the density is balanced by good acidity. Not quite as sweet.

2001 Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris “Herrenweg de Turckheim” ($31.99): The whole package, including an opulent texture; sweet, but the acidity leaves an impression of almost angularity; very bright and aromatic.