Last weekend I was in a high-end supermarket in Central Hong Kong, City Super IFC, and I walked by and noticed bottles of Domaine Weinbach Pinot Noir Alsace Clos des Capucins 2019. I love excellent pinot noir from Alsace, so I decided to buy a bottle. It cost HKD$398 a bottle, which is the equivalent of about US$50.
Marie and I drank it for dinner in our apartment in Soho with some grilled teriyaki chicken and vegetables. It was a simple dinner, but the pinot really took it to a higher level. I loved the ripe strawberry and cherry aromas with some caramel and burnt orange undertones. It’s medium-bodied and rich with hints of chocolate at the end, and is delicious now but has the tannin structure to improve with age. I rated it 94 points.
I was smiling to myself as I drank the wine and marveled at how pinot noir in Alsace has changed since I started going to the region back in 1985. Until about 10 years ago, most pinot noirs from Alsace were light and rather insipid. They were more like light reds or even dark rosés than serious red wines. But I think a combination of climate change, a new generation of winemakers and an improvement in viticulture to ripen grapes like pinot noir changed this. And I remember having dinner about a decade ago in Alsace with Pierre Trimbach, whose family is one of the benchmarks for many in the region, and who said that “it wasn’t until now that red wine became a priority for winemakers in Alsace.”
Trimbach’s wine region is extremely diverse in soils, microclimates and vineyard aspects, and it can make very different pinots – it’s just as varied as Burgundy and maybe even more so. Alsace is definitely worth a look at for pinots. The only problem is that it represents a tiny percentage of the total production of Alsace, so you may need to go there to find some!
– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman
