Humbrecht: Alsace needs sweetness code

Daily wine news - the latest breaking wine news from around the world News News Wine News decanter.media.ipcdigital.co.uk/11150/000001326/e440_orh100000w160/humbrecht.jpg decanter.media.ipcdigital.co.uk/11150/000001326/6534/humbrecht.jpg
  • Monday 31 January 2011
  • by

Alsace 'absolutely' needs a system to help consumers navigate the wildly varying levels of sweetness found in its wines, according to Olivier Humbrecht MW.

spacer

Interviewed by Andrew Jefford in the March issue of Decanter magazine, the head of Domaine Zind-Humbrecht nonetheless warns against trying to over-simplify the region’s notoriously complex range of wine styles.

‘Maybe it would be easier to say to Alsace producers – okay, nothing but dry wines,’ Humbrecht tells Decanter.

‘But it would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater… Simplifying to that degree means depriving ourselves of some of our greatest wines.’

Zind-Humbrecht, which allows its wines to ferment to the level of natural sweetness allowed by its indigenous yeasts, uses a one-to-five scale to indicate the level of sweetness on all its labels.

‘If Alsace as a whole adopts a system, I will happily use that either with ours or as a replacement for it,’ says Humbrecht. ‘But we absolutely need a system.’

Asked about Alsace’s equally controversial grand cru designation – opposed by rival producers Trimbach and Hugel – Humbrecht says the company uses the classification, ‘provided the sites correspond to my idea of what a grand cru should be – if they are found near the heart of the grand cru, for example’.

Meanwhile, Andrew Jefford staunchly defends the system in his monthly column, also in the March issue of Decanter, arguing that grands crus have created extra layers of complexity and character among the region’s best wines.

And he contrasts the rules in Alsace with the much looser definition of ‘grand cru’ in St-Emilion, which he describes as ‘an embarrassment and a joke’.

The full interview with Olivier Humbrecht MW, and Andrew Jefford’s column, both appear in the March issue of Decanter magazine.

Panel tastings

Wine labels from some of the world's most famous wines

Webfeed

Related Topics

  • How to buy a vineyard

Related content

One in five buy counterfeit alcohol in UK - survey

Nouveau World, Finbow wine fraudster imprisoned for seven years

Fraudsters found guilty in £4.5m Nouveau/Finbow wine trial

  • Rated

Rated

spacer

Germany to consume more wine than Italy by 2018, says Vinexpo

Champagne exports 'will overtake' French sales for first time in 2015

Heavy discounts blamed for sluggish wine sales say Constellation and Majestic

Section Archive

February, 2015

January, 2015

December, 2014

November, 2014

October, 2014

September, 2014

August, 2014

July, 2014

June, 2014

May, 2014

April, 2014

March, 2014

Related Topics

  • Minimum alcohol pricing
gipoco.com is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.