Wine
Agreeable Alsace
Ausonius
Wine writers tend to play safe with epithets — fruity, fresh, crisp, rounded, blackcurranty (if it's cabernet), buttery (if it's chardonnay): these come up with a Homeric regularity which is understand- able when one considers how difficult it is to fix tastes in the mind. There is less excuse, I've felt, for always repeating the same epithet about Alsace: I was getting bored, until I visited the region last month, with seeing it referred to unfailingly as `fairy-tale'. I was also suspicious: the term conjured up images of a wine-growing Stratford-upon-Avon. I must admit defeat.
The region has an enchantment for which it is very difficult to find better words. There is a smiling, sunny, fertile valley. There are romantic hills, coated in a delicious mixture of pines, chestnut and beech and topped with ruined castles. There are many small mediaeval towns, so picturesque that it seems pointless to photograph them. The food is at times too good to be true. A meal which M. Hubert Trimbach considered 'average' would have been out of this world in England. There is an almost Mediterranean light hundreds of miles from any sea, a general sense of a preternaturally blessed land. No wonder J. Caesar, in 58 BC, called this place `optimus totius Galliae'. .
The only fly in this magic ointment hatched later: was Alsace in fact 'pars Galliae', or 'pars Germaniae'? The dark side of the fairy tale was the repeated and often bloody shunting of the region be- tween the two rival powers: Thirty Years' war, Franco-Prussian war, first world war, second world war; each involved Alsace in a costly change of allegiance. Although that is all over now (Hubert Trimbach says, not altogether reassuringly, that the next war will not take place along the Rhine), the region may still be suffering, vinously at least, from a confusion of identity.
These are French wines with the grapi- ness associated with Germany; they are grapy wines, but they are completely dry, often austere, and so they repel the sweet- toothed lovers of liebfraumilch. Situated right on the German border, Alsace might seem a marginal French wine region. In terms of economic importance, that would be a false impression. Alsace produces 20 per cent of all French white AC wine, and more remarkable still, 45 per cent of the AC white consumed in France.
In the UK, with all the world's wines to choose from, we do not need to be concerned with quantity but only with quality. On this front, no region in France, or perhaps the world, could claim a higher reputation for reliability. Faced with the thankless job of choosing a wine from a wine bar or restaurant list with no names of guaranteed excellence, I always opt for Alsace as the safest bet. Consistent quality from the region as a whole was, I imagine, the first priority of the Alsatian wine- growers when they established the single appellation Alsace amid the devastation of the end of the war in 1945. This uniformity contrasts very strongly with the situation in Bordeaux or Burgundy where each village has its own AC.
The Alsatians presumably felt that their multiplicity of grape varieties provided sufficient differentiation. There are now seven official white varieties, chasselas, sylvaner, pinot blanc, muscat, tokay-pinot gris, gewilrztraminer and riesling. The last two are the best known over here, but , there is a growing feeling in Alsace that for all its obvious appeal (and one might add its far more satisfying balance when grown in Alsace than anywhere else) the gewiirz- traminer cannot compete on the highest level of quality with tokay and riesling. These are also wines of deceptive power (always tasted in growers' cellars after the red pinot noir which is grown in small quantities in Alsace) which can comple- ment red meat. On a more everyday level, the grape variety to watch is undoubtedly pinot blanc. It makes comparatively soft wines, less steely than the riesling, less overpoweringly grapy than gewilrz or mus- cat, but with more than sufficient fruit to the fore, extraordinarily easy to drink.
Continued on page 51 What struck me most on my recent visit, however, was not so much the differences between them as the differences within them -- the differences caused by varia- tions of location, soil and micro-climate which the uniform appellation masks. Alsa- tian wines are just as individual as their German cousins down the Rhine, but the labels conceal this individuality in order not to confuse the customer. The recent (1983) introduction of the Alsace grand cru appellation for wines from 25 special vineyards and the official recognition (1984) of the categories `Vendange Tar- dive' and 'Selection des Grains Nobles' for late-harvested and botrytis-affected wines are signs of a timely, if cautious, move away from uniformity.
The difference between the wines of Hugel (soft, with ample bouquet) and those of Trimbach (austere, steely, dry), for instance, comes in part from the differ- ence in character between their own re- spective vineyards in Riquewihr and in Ribeauville a few kilometres to the north, where about a quarter of these grower- merchants' grapes are picked. With grow- ers, the differences becomes even more marked. Mme Faller, who lives in the beautiful Domaine Weinbach, makes love- ly delicate and forward wines from the light soil of the Clos des Capucins in the grand cru Schlossberg vineyard. The Rolly- Gassmann partnership makes a formidable range of rich, slow-maturing wines in a completely different style (sometimes a little too sweet for my taste) from the much heavier soil of Rorschwihr and Rodern. One might not expect individuality and the highest quality from a wine co-operative, but that of Ingersheim, which supplies Sainsbury's, shows a remarkable versatility in being able to produce both straightfor- ward wine in largish quantity for the supermarket shelves, and single vineyard nesling and gewiirztraminer to match any in the region.
A final note on recent vintages. The Alsatians have been lucky, for it is rare that two such superb vintages as '83 and '85 come so close together. The '83s may have more power and concentration, but the '85s are full of bouquet and elegance (except for the sylvaner, which is a typical- ly rich). The prospects for '86 are looking extremely good.
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