Mittelbergheim, Alsace
Alsace is known to have outstandingly-beautiful villages where its age-old winemaking tradition is found at every step in its architecture, some of these villages like Ribeauvillé have gone a little over the top in terms of tourist attraction, but Mittelbergheim managed to remain quite authentic and relatively off the mass-tourism
track, so be sure to go there, you'll understand that winemaking and viticulture is not
some recent addition, it's embedded in the local culture (the villages of Champagne in comparison lack this feel of joyful rooting in vinous history) and if you try to project yourself mentally in the late 19th century when these villages were at their peak demographically you can't but understand that this was really a dream country over here, with a quality of life that could compete with several legendary regions of Italy.
I had the opportunity to meet Jean Pierre and taste his wine lengthly during the Wein Salon Natürel in Cologne (the German natural-wine fair by large) last year, I really loved his wines (including his then-sold-out Pinot Noir L'Age de Pierre, another of these terrific Alsace reds) and the guy impressed me also by his calm openness as he explained his work with simplicity but also with detail.
The domaines makes about 12 hectares, it has been a family winery for 7 generations (since the 17th century for sure), his elders were growing other crops as well including tobacco and it lasted until his parents Pierre and Doris who decided in 1970 to devote all their time to the viticulture and winemaking. Today Jean-Pierre, who made his first vinifications in the domaine in 1987, works with his wife Sophie, his sister Anne-Lise and her husband. If you're looking for real Alsace wines that were not rushed to the market, have gone through the élevage time they ask, this is the domaine to go.
The family winery sits in the middle of the village just a short distance from the church (you can see the family street house lefthand on the picture on right), and when you stroll this main street (aptly named rue Principale) like I did before my visit you can see that more wineries are operating all along the street, these vintners kept working in these old farms, living near their facility.
As seen on the left, Mittelbergheim sits at the foot of the Vosges, near the village of Barr (I think it's the other church you see on the right) and with a 13th-century medieval fort hovering atop a hill in the far (you can see it on the pic on left, in the upper right), this is the Chateau du Haut Andlau (currently being renovated). Lots of history on these slopes, and you really feel it at every step, it's been pretty well preserved throughout the centuries.
When I visited Jean-Pierre, he was with Frédéric Camdjian who was loading a few cases of wine in his car for his natural-wine bistrot & cave in Strasbourg, Jour de Fête, here Jean Pierre had him tasting him two samples coming from a
vat or something, one was clearly turbid and still
fermenting.
I visited Jour de Fête (here the Facebook page), it's on a quiet side street in the Krutenau, a neighborhood I always liked when I was living in Strasbourg, it's almost downtown but more authentic, especially today with all these fancy shops selling luxury junk thay have overwhelmed the touristic streets. You can choose any bottle blind in this place, it's all real wine, no tricks, and the food is in line with the wine. They also do regular tastings with the vigneron who explains his work.
The other noteworthy natural-wine venue in Strasbourg (there may be another two actually) is Au Fil du Vin Libre, it's a caviste located on the Quai des Bateliers on the edge of the Krutenau.
The other venues are the aptly named bistrot A Bout de Soufre, there's also Oenosphère (also in the Krutenau area)which has some natural/biodynamic wines and also Terres à Vin in the more central part of Strasbourg, near the Place Gutemberg and the cathedral.
What makes it possible to keep working in the same premises in the 21st century is the fact that these village farms were pretty bi, with several buidings along the courtyard and a large barn like here at the end, on the garden/fields side.
The farmers could thus access some of their fields
and parcels directly from the back side, the front side on the main street being (it seems to me) for shipping the products. It has to be said again that these farms were growing different crops along grapes, including tobacco, a traditional production in Alsace.
It is noteworthy to say that while in (until) 1719 growing tobacco was forbidden in the whole of France, it was only allowed in Alsace and Franche-Comté (Jura). Features in the traditionnal farm architecture in Alsace like expanding roofs and open barns hint at the importance of tobacco drying in individual farms and you can still guess where they'd hang and dry the long tobacco leaves.
In the barn in the back of the farm at the other end of the courtyard there were a couple of tractors plus several plowing tools. From the lawn outside you could enjoy the view on a few parcels (not Rietsch obviously) and on the hills and woods in the far. A barbecue and a bench under a tree suggested that they still enjoyed socially this landscape which happily had remained untouched (so many villages have been overbuilt with modern cement homes lately).
Sitting with Frédéric Camdjian in the tasting room, were were poured a first wine by Jean Pierre Rietsch :
__ Klevener de Heiligenstein 2014 (here is the data for the 2012), pink Savagnin or Savagnin rose (local grape variety), it's a non-aromatic version of the Gewürztraminer, Jean Pierre says. Bottle opened 4 days before,
Jean Pierre says that he likes to check how open natural wine behaves after a few days in an open bottles, offering to open another one to compare. The wine stands time pretty well, especially that he just put back the cork, he didn't use one of these pump corks.
This is probably the only Savagnin-rose that has been vinifies naturally, the appellation area for this variety is on the Village of Heiligenstein because the variety was originally brought back from Italy in 1742 by the mayor [bourgmestre] of this village.
Turbid wine, nice acidity, no added SO2, very nice and enjoyable, Alsace rocks... Jean Pierre says he kept the bottled wine in the cellar for a year. Total SO2 in the wine : 11 mg (not added, resulted from the naturally-occuring fermentation), 13 % alcohol. Direct press. When it was bottled in the spring of 2015 the wine just got a loose filtration with cellulose plates, 6 microns, which lets much go through, that's why the wine retained its qualities. Jean Pierre Rietsch says that wine ages better in the bottle with a light deposit of lees, it finds thing to feeds itsel from, he says there's an autolysis process in the bottle which is beneficial for the wine.
Just reaching the market these days. Jean Pierre says that there was a mousy character in the beginning [goût de souris] a few months ago but that it has almost vanished although he still can guess it.
Jean Pierre opened a bottle of it in front of us and except for the just-opened bottle having more gas, the long-opened bottle was pretty similar and unharmed by exposure to air, it was full-mouthed and ample with a light and pleasant tickling on the tongue, Jean Piere says that you can consider carafing the wine when you open the bottle. He says there's no real risk having 1 gram of residual sugar in a wine that had no added SO2, even 3 or 4 grams could be fine, you'll have a light perly thing in the wine that goes away when carafed.
Jean Pierre says that he still has some Riesling 2014 which are still in vats now, he'll bottle soon Stein 2014, Zotzenberg 2014 and Wiebelsberg 2014, plus a Solera with 3 years of élevage, this all should be available around september. Last winter in december he had almost nothing to sell which is tricky around the Christmas season because lots of people come and ask for wines.
__ Solera (vat sample), made with Savagnin Rose 2011, 2013 and 2015 to this date, it should get additional vintages along the years as he'll only bottle a proportion of the cuvée year after year and replace the missing voleme with new juice. Initially what happened is that the 2011 which was in a barrel for its élevage was
stuck with 15 grams of residual sugar, so he first waited for 2 years but it didn't move [you guess that of course all the wines here ferment on indigenous yeast, sometimes along months or years] so he added a younger juice to reactivate the fermentation and that's how this solera experiment
began, he added the 2013 which was in large-capacity foudres, racking the dual vintage in a vat with floating lid. In 2015 because of the good vintage he decided to make whole-clustered maceration with the Savagnin rose and after it he blended it with the solera, finishing its fermentation with the 2011 & 2013 for a total volume of 40 hectoliters.
He'll begin to bottle part of the volume this year, one half roughly, replacing this volume with the new (2016) vintage so that the solera continues. In the future he plans to continue this solera in a foudre (like the ones on the picture above). Asked about the labelling if it'll be a table wine he says he doesn't know yet for sure, for now he plans to keep in in the AOC and if the wine administration gets in the way he'll see, possibly bottling it as Vin de France.
Exciting golden color, darker than the previous Savagnin rose, because of the maceration for the 2015 and some oxidation.Some turbidity. He keeps the vat outside so that the solera follows the temperature changes along the seasons, he'll leave it outside still a few weeks so that it can finish the bit of residual sugar left, moving it indoors when the full-blown summer will come.
Superb wine with complex aromas, dry fruits, apricot & raisins. Again, no added SO2 in this wine. Jean Pierre says that what he likes is you have both the richness character of an older vintage and the youthfull tonicity brought by the young wines, that's true, there's just the bit of volatile and tension that make a wine rock. Nice concentration with easy drinking character. This cuvée will certainly be available in autumn 2016, the name of the cuvée should be Pas à Pas.
At one point Alex showed up (here sitting on left), he was late for his appointment herewith Jean Pierre Rietsch because Paris was a mess when he left, after the flooding of the Seine and the closing of the right-bank expressway. Alex Zulch who is
from Germany is a Paris-based importer,
his company Vin Vivants (lebendige Weine) brings French natural wines to the German market. Alex stopped in Strasbourg on his way to Ulm and Munich where he'd visit his customers with samples. The venue in Munich is Gratitude, an organic restaurant with a good selection of wines. The other well-known restaurant in Munich with natural wines, M Belleville, started with buying his selection of wines but then bypassed him and bought direct (not very fair...). After Munich he'll go to Linz and Vienna and also visit growers in Austria (Burgenland), Tschida and Preisinger, as well as Andert which are among the vignerons he's adding in his portfolio. In Vienna he'll stop at several restaurants, he says the Austrian capital has become hot for natural wines, including the famed Steirereck.
__ Buberi 2015. A 10 % alcohol red bottled in one-liter bottles. Buberi means cheap wine in Alsatian [dialect], the French saying piquette. This is the 2nd time he makes this cuvée, the first being in 2015 when a friend and wine-bar owner [Sauvage, Michel Moulherat, founder of the Cave de l'Insolite was then associate of Sébastien there] in Paris two years ago asked him to make a piquette like some vignerons still make in Jura, the guy said. A century ago or even in the mid 20th century it was common to find this cheap category of wine, a cheap, low-aclohol and somehow diluted wine which owes its name to the fact that it would tend to piquer in the mouth like vinegar. So Jean Pierre made this cuvée specially for Sauvage, taking advantage that the vintage that year was not a great one, he made a 8 % or 9 % wine, it was really this light piquette of the past. Soon after it was delivered in Paris and later he received a call or an email from a guy in Tokyo who had tasted it and wanted to order some for Japan, but the volume here is confidential, he made a total of 200 liters, at least for the 1st vintage, and there was no room for export. He had sold this cuvée 4 € a bottle professional price, for the record.
This one tastes like grenadine with this candy-like aroma, the mouth is short but you drink that to quench your thirst and stay on your feet. It's not even with faults, that's a rustic little wine. He filtered this one because there was sediments of pomace, but he adds that it was bottled not long ago and it should remain spotless clear, some turbidity should appear at some point later because the filtration was light. Interesting micro cuvée, all domaines should have a similar cheap wine that goes with this piquette tradition, something unpretentious and affordable. But I'm afraid the mainstream wineries look so much to maximize their revenues that they'd consider such a move like a foolish loss of energy.
__ Riesling Stein 2014, from a foudre, still on its lees at this stage. Vines are 25-30 years old, Jean Pierre planted them with his father at the time. He says that he wants to have the terroir expression in these wines, the limestone minerality of the soil,
he plans to have the wine complete almost 24 months of élevage (maybe 22), could be bottled next august. There's another dimension in long élevage wines, no wood input here, these are very old foudres, there's only the micro oxigenation that counts and the exchange with the lees. The mineralisation really develops in the wine when you let oxigen do its long work on the wine, he says, the bacteria also keep working on the wine. This particular cuvée got only 10 mg the first year because there was volatile push at some point, but if you make a lab test now, you won't find any SO2 left probably, the total SO2 will be certainly below 20. The élevage is in a mid-interred cellar which remains cool, it's about 16 ° C (61 ° F) right now he says. But he adds that now he is,'t worried about the temperature issue, the wines get accustomed to temperature swings and after a while along these long élevages they're more apt at standing changes, it's at the beginning, in the first 6 months, that the wines are more exposed to problems.
Tasting the wine : Imperious, majestic nose, and also generous and fresh. In the mouth : gorgeous, silky freshness going down the throat..
Price is 13 € tax included at the domaine, great deal indeed (professional price is about 10 €). The cuvée is almost entirely reserved by now, he says he may have the equivalent of 400 bottles available (as said, it will be bottled next august).
__ Riesling Brandluft 2014. 3 or 4 grams of residual sugar at this stage. Soil is a calcareous-sandstone mix of two soil types, the one of Stein and the one of Zotzenberg, he says.
Nose : hawthorn. Tingling on the tongue, with energy, that's beautiful, liveness feel.
__ Riesling Grand Cru Zotzenber 2014, sample from a foudre, also bottled next summer probably. He says it's interesting to taste these Rielsing wines on different terroirs and compare as they've been vinified similarly with a common approach in the [organic] vineyard management. The Zotzenberg he says offers both the fullness of the Stein and the tension of the Brandluft, it's interesting in this regard, therte's more volume feel in this wine, the terroir
yields more concentrated wines. There's also a bit of residual sugar
here albeit less than in the Brandluft, he says you have to be patient it takes sometimes a year at the end to "eat" 1,5 gram of sugar. He'll wait what it takes.
Clear color. The wine illuminates the palate. Refined and intense, length.
__ Riesling grand cru Wiebelsberg 2014 (foudre sample), Jean Pierre says it's a tiny 11-are parcel with a big terroir difference because of sandy soils rich with silica which yield very different Riesling wines, they're much more aerial compared from the wines of Mittelbergheim. Still fermenting with the related fermentative aromas. Alex asks if there is a tannin feel here but Jean Pierre says there was no maceration, it's a direct press, the mouth feel can be related with the CO2, he says, which can be mistaken for tannin. He says it's almost dry and the 500-liter micro cuvée which is in stainless steel (because of the small volume) will be bottled in the next few weeks. The wine has indeed a nice rich feel in the mouth with fullness.
__ Auxerrois 2015 which will make the cuvée Entre Chien et Loup, first we taste the "clear" wine, the one that is almost ready. The parcel was picked in a single day and pressed right away, the juice being split in two fermenters side by side, one having completed its fermentation while the other has stalled somehow and is still way from its completion. Jean Pierre says he could bottle the one that's ready and wait for the other batch to finish its fermentation to make a 2nd bottling but ideally he'd would like to wait and blend the two vats before bottling the whole. The "finished" Auxerrois has 2 grams of residual sugar and with the lesser acidity of the Auxerrois there's a volume feel in the mouth. Still, Alex says, the acidity feel is fine for this wine, no weakness on this side. This is an easy-drinking wine for sure.
__ Auxerrois 2015, the "unfinished" turbid glass. Odd that the two fermenters are side by side and that the grapes were picked & pressed the same day. Tastes almost like bernache or vin nouveau with a sugary, honeyish feel, interesting.
__ Murmure 2015, Muscat Ottonel, 17-day whole-clusetered maceration. The label is designed by a German artist who lives in Alsace, Marie Dréa, this one features John Lennon with Yoko Ono when they staged a weeklong bed-in agains the Vietnam war.
Amber color, lightly turbid. Nose : ripeness with raisins aromas, you also feel the vividness with the nose. Very nice wine with a vegetal character. 11 % alcohol. No added SO2 like most of Rietsch's wines. Should go well with sea food and sushi, Alex and Jean Pierre say while sipping.
Jean Pierre says that in 2014 he worked this cuvée differently, he had put back the pomace : he had pressed, taken back the pomace after the pressing and destemmed it and thrown back the stemless pomace in the juice and this was a good move in retrospection when he compares the wines, so he'll do that again in 2016. On the other hand the vintage was different and in 2015 the grapes were beautiful but maybe a bit too big.
__ Crémant d'Alsace Extra Brut 2013. Blend of Auxerrois 60 %, Chardonnay 25 % and Pinot Gris 15 %. All fermented on wild yeast of course, the 1st fermentation takes place
in cement vats and the tirage or bottling for the 2nd fermentation takes place the following year with an adding of fresh juice just after the harvest, so there's no added sugar per se, just grape juice. Spent around 18 months sur lattes (cellared in bottles before the disgorgement).
For this cuvée Jean Pierre says he added 15 mg of SO2 at the disgorgement stage. To do that he completes the bottles after the disgorgement with 1 centiliter of wine that had enough SO2 so that he reaches this 15mg-level in the whole bottle. He had lab checks done on the sparkling afterwards and it was on target at 15mg SO2.
Tastes good, rich and refined bubbles.
__ Crémant d'Alsace Brut Nature, same wine but this one didn't have any SO2 added (at the disgorment/replacement stage). This is the version he prefers and on this one the back label clearly stated "no added sulfites" (sans sulfites ajoutés), offering a very informative experience for people who want what even a very light SO2 addition can do on wines. This SO2-free sparkling is obviously more tender, the color is also a bit more on the golden-shades side, that's also a visual proof that SO2 lightens the color of white wines.
__ Pinot Noir vieilles vignes (old vines) 2015, sample taken from a foudre. 12 hectoliter cuvée. Look at this color, I swear there's no Photoshop here, no trick, it's as is on the picture, with this delicate milky turbidity, such a color can't lie, I'm beginning to be an expert on these shades of red...
When you leave the farm by foot from its flank on the vineyard side, you follow a small road and there almost immediately with the village buildings and church in the background you can see some parcels of the family domaine. Here is a parcel of Pinot Gris, they're about 30 years old. Jean Pierre says that he keeps grass between the rows and he also sows diverse weeds, leguminous plants. Right now you don't see it as well because the grass is lying down at this season but it is very diverse. He keeps a grassy soil year around, never has a bare soil, he just plows a bit under the row so that the soil breathes.
Further, this time on the right side of the road, we pass a parcel of pinot noir, this is not the old vines we tasted, this one is about 20 years old, it's located lightly below the terroir (lieu-dit) Stein, the soil here is richer and there's almost no slope, that's why the vegetable gardens of the village have been here traditionally. But these parcels make pretty wines nonetheless.
The other passion of Jean Pierre is the family vegetable garden where he's experimenting with permaculture. You have this traditional orchard among the parcels with also a small surface devoted to vegetables with a heap pof manure on the side. Jean Pierre's father has always tended his vegetable garden and he himself loves that. He shows me which vegetables dot these small mounds, the place looks great, and it's all mixed, no single crop, it's like a natural growth of different vegetables just slightly organized by the human hand.
The planting on these small mounts is good for the vegetables because here the soil is clayish and it allows a better draining of the roots as well as getting the rooting soil warmer in the season. This way you also create your soil with compost, the idea being not to plow it anymore, just renew it with natural compost, peelings, mown grass and so on. The goal, he says is get the right carbon to nitrogen ratio, you create your topsoil, taking lessons from what you see in the woods where you have rich soils even though there's no human intervention. To prevent the proliferation of weeds he covers these mounds with shredded wood.
I could but say a few words about this incredible old public press still sitting at 10 Rue Principale, right next to the door to the Domaine Rietsch : the "Pressoir de la Cour Dimière is one of the 8 surviving old presses of the village, when Mittelbergheim had several dozens of them. This one has been reconstructered or modified of course since 1572 and the screw was originally made in wood.
I noticed a few namesakes in Mittelbergheim (my name written with German phonetics) as there are at least two domaines named Seltz from what I saw in my stroll along the village's main street. This is certainly conventional Alsace wine but that was funny and their signs were nice, especially the one on the left.
Another thing of interest was the local monument aux morts for the WW1 fallen soldiers, I was stunned to discover that in spite of the relatively big size of this village there were only 16 names on it (the names in gold, including 2 from the Seltz families by the way), which is much less than what you'd count on a similarly-sized village in the rest of France where it would be easily 3 times more. Alsace was German-administered during this war (and this since 1870) and it could hint that the German commanders during this awfull trench warfare of 1914-1918 were much wiser than the French (who mindlessly sent assault wave after assault wave of their own conscripts to a certain death...
The wine is just delicious, there's no word for these delicate pinots of Alsace, what a fruit and such a nice silkiness, I'd down this bottle by myself like nothing. If Dionysos exists he'll choose such a wine for sure.
Jean Pierre says he'll bottle it in summer certainly.
The wine is virtually all sold already he adds, even though it'll be on the market in november or december, but there will certainly be some bottles available for the ones who ask. He doesn't publicize the cuvée, so don't ask all of you for this wine or he'll know I'm the one who put it in the spotlight....
This parcel will make the generic cuvée pinot noir of the domaine. The vines are quite nice these days but he says there's a long way to go until harvest day, anything could happen in terms of weather accidents until then, hail for example.
He says he spends quite a lot of time here in the season, in the morning or in the evening, the goal being to reach as much as possible some level of autonomy in the vegetable supply. What is beautiful he says is that in the season you just walk down from the house and make your market, picking whatever is ready for either a salad or a cooking the same day.
A few bottle prices on the web for the wines of Domaine Rietsch
I didn't ask about the list of countries where Rietsch wines are exported but Japan seems to have access to a wide range of cuvées.
As its name hints it was used to collect the taxes (under the form of
grape load) which was due by the farmers in proportion of their surface. You hardly find such rich remnants of the wine civilization elsewhere in France.
Source : village's webpage about the history of Mittelbergheim.
German surnames, French first names. My great-great grandfather was Alsatian, but his first name was Johann. He was born in the 1790s and the family history has it that he was a member of Napoleon's personal regiment. He lived into his 90s, and cried when Alsace went to the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war. I suspect he also missed Alsatian wine.
We cycled in Alsace two years ago. The wine was wonderful. The hills not so much.
Posted by: frankschmidtmissouri | June 20, 2016 at 11:00 PM
Rather than lightening the colour of white wines, SO2 prevents them from oxidisation.
Posted by: Nicolas de ruines | September 14, 2016 at 11:31 AM