When drinking Alsatian wines, start with the reds!

Our January wine tasting introduced people to several good and great white and red wines from France’s Alsace.

We tasted nine wines including a Pinot Gris, a Riesling, two iconic Gewürztraminers from Hugel still sublime after a decade and several very good, subtly fruity and oaky Pinot Noirs (see picture above). Participants’ ratings for each wine largely matched those of wine professionals and the Vivino crowd. 

For me the big surprise was just how age-worthy some of these wines were. Sometimes I keep wines well beyond their "best by" dates just to see what happens to them after a couple of additional years in the cellar. Sometimes they turn, sometimes they become "interesting" (often like a natural wine), and sometimes they just wow you. 

Case in point: We started the tasting with a 2019 Gewürztraminer from the Cave due Bennwihr, a big cooperative winery. Although it had lost a little of its fruity edge after seven years in my cellar, it had also developed some intriguing Rieslingy aromatic notes. A few participants didn't like it, while others said they really enjoyed it. 

The highlights of the evening were without a doubt another two older Gewürztraminers, both from Famille Hugel with its classic yellow labels. We started with a 2014 bottle--already 12 years young--and it was frankly amazing, with intense tropical fruit notes, green apple, grapefruit peel and lemon grass. Next, we tried a 2009--17 years old--and it was also still exquisite, maintaining all its typical younger-years exotic fruit notes while also offering some apricot jam and a hint of noble rot. 

We ended the evening with four red wines, all of which I consider very good wines, but after the exuberance of the Gewürztraminers they were somewhat disappointing. Even the 2014 Hugel Pinot Noir Grossi Läue, normally an excellent red on its own, seemed a shadow of its white siblings. I think that if we had started the evening with the Alsatian reds, people would have liked them better. I had forgotten that some of the wineries we visited in Alsace a couple of years ago did just that, serving the red wines first, and then ending with the Gewürztraminers. 

Takeaway: If you're planning to serve a meal with Alsatian wines, you might want to start with the lighter Pinot Noirs and end with a bang on the Gewürztraminers!