Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 10

Breakthrough Wines

Not only soil, site
and farming, but
the selection of the
vines themselves
may make a big
difference in whether
gewurztraminer is
comically blunt and
perfumed, or gentle,
satin-textured and
restrained.

Alsace Gewurztraminer

Other than sometimes enjoying its quirky charms
with Cantonese dishes, or with choucroute in
Alsace, I tend to steer clear of the grape. Or did, until
recently, and now I can't get it out of my head.
The fork in the road came at Noreetuh, a restaurant in NYC's East Village serving Hawaiian-FrenchAsian food. I'd recently tasted a lot of Alsace wines
for this magazine, and several wines from Olivier
Zind-Humbrecht stood out-including a gewurztraminer. When he came to New York this past spring,
we agreed to meet for dinner at Noreetuh.
He arrived with a cache of 2016s, including the
Clos Windsbuhl Gewurztraminer and the Rangen
de Thann Clos St-Urbain Riesling. I expected to be
wowed by the riesling, a wine from the far south of
Alsace, from vines planted on a hillside of volcanic
ash. It's consistently one of the region's greats.
What I didn't expect was to fall in love with the
gewurztraminer, right there in the company of Noreetuh's tuna poke (granted, it's pretty great poke, but
still). It was the combination of freshness and amplitude that made the combination hard to resist.
Humbrecht acknowledged that gewurztraminer
could be overly aggressive. "But I always say, don't
blame the grape or the vineyard. Blame the grower,"
he told me. "It's the job of the grower to choose the

right plant material. And the clonal material for
gewurztraminer is terrible. I had to rip out a thirteenyear-old vineyard because the clones were so bad."
He has since focused on his own massal selections
as an important part of his biodynamic viticultural
practice.
Clos Windsbuhl, he explained, grows in a fossilrich, chalky limestone soil the locals call muschelkalk,
some of it weathered into clay, a combination that's
particularly accommodating to vine roots as they
search for nutrients. The vineyard rises up a steep
hill in Hunawihr, where the southeastern exposure
and the relatively high altitude (1,150 feet) combine
to allow the fruit to ripen slowly.
Humbrecht then told a story of meeting Xavier
Florin, a disciple of Rudolf Steiner and noted biodynamic consultant, at a conference in Alsace in 2003.
Humbrecht had been impressed by the elder's "unbelievable energy and power." There was a tree outside
the room where they were talking. "He took my hand
and said, 'Olivier, what do you see there?'" Humbrecht recalled. "A tree. 'More?' A lime tree. 'Yes, but
what do you see there? Don't you see the stomach of
the earth? Forget gravity. A tree and a plant is where
the earth digests everything.'"
To Humbrecht's point: The plants at Clos Winds-

Tasting Notes by Joshua Greene, W&S Alsace wine critic

Jean-Baptiste Adam 2016 Alsace
Les Natures Gewurztraminer

Domaines Schlumberger 2015 Alsace
Les Princes Abbés Gewurztraminer

Pierre Sparr 2016 Alsace
Grande Réserve Gewurztraminer

Les Natures is Jean-Baptiste Adam's estate range
from biodynamically farmed grapes, the wines certified organic. It grows on a granite hillside, then ferments and ages in 100-year-old French oak casks,
creating a wine of silken refinement that's grand when
first opened, and becomes increasingly fresh, shimmering and beautiful as it takes on air. (93 points,
$27; The Sorting Table, Napa, CA)

An off-dry style, this wine feels sumptuous and velvety
rather than sweet, its satin texture carrying flavors
of fresh ginger and oranges. Layered and mouthfilling, this is lively and lasting. (91 points, $25; Maisons
Marques & Domaines USA, Oakland, CA)

This wine's rose scent might remind you of spring;
it's charming in its spicy intensity, tight and yet continually giving. The pale fruit is mostly about textural
richness, which makes this an appealing match for
cracked crab. (92 points, $20; Wilson Daniels, St.
Helena, CA)

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