The vertical tasting of Domaine Zind Humbrecht’s rieslings from the Rangen grand cru site in Alsace, France, earlier this month only went back to the 1978 vintage, but it was arguably the most remarkable vertical tasting I have attended in recent years. You see, although the Rangen has been cultivated since at least the early Middle Ages, just like the grand crus of Burgundy, paradoxically it is also a new site.
As far as anyone knows, no bottles of Rangen wine from before 1978 exist. This is because for a long time no wine was bottled. In fact, by the 1960s the great majority of the Rangen had fallen out of cultivation and it teetered on the edge of the abyss. What makes this situation extraordinary is that for many centuries before that it was one of the most famous vineyard sites in Alsace. These massive ups and downs say everything about the checkered history of the region that flip-flopped between being German and French. It has firmly been part of France since 1945.
What is so fascinating about the story of the Rangen’s rebirth is the fact that it is interwoven with the story of the grand cru system in Alsace and the new vineyard classifications of Germany and Austria. When Leonard Umbrecht of Domaine Zind Humbrecht purchased the last 3.5 hectares of vines in the Rangen in 1977, he was convinced that he had acquired one of the great forgotten terroirs of his region and Western Europe. The prospect of having to rebuild a semi-ruined vineyard came with this new territory.
This daring purchase was part of his plan to reinvent Domaine Zind Humbrecht and the Alsace region as producers of great and unique wines. When the Alsace’s grand cru system was introduced in 1983, the Rangen was one of the first tranche of sites designated grand cru. It is a little-known fact that this convinced a new generation of German and Austrian wine producers that new vineyard classifications were not only necessary, but also practical undertakings. This helped lay the foundations for Germany’s Grosse Gewachse (GG) ad Austria’s Erste Lagen (EL).
Back in the late 1970s and 1980s, many of Leonard Humbrecht’s colleagues laughed at him because he was completely out of step with the dominant trend in Alsace. At this time, the most sought-after Alsace vineyards were those on flat or gently sloping grounds that could be cultivated almost completely (excepting pruning and harvest) using tractors. The idea of actively seeking out slopes with an average 90 percent grade seemed absurd to Humbrecht’s colleagues. Everything in the Rangen has to be done by hand except for winch ploughing, which involves the plowman riding a plough that is pulled up the precipitous slope by a cable attached to a tractor.
Not only is the Rangen site extremely steep, but the soil – primarily volcanic ash compacted into hard rock over millions of years along with greywacke – adds to the difficulty of cultivation.
The high altitude, ranging from the bank of the Thur river at 320 meters above sea level to 450 meters at the top of the slope, makes this a cool location in a warm region. The almost constant wind and the proximity of the Grand Ballon peak, the highest of the Vosges Mountains at 1,424 meters, accentuate this. However, it is exactly these things that make the Rangen special.
The first thing to say about the tasting is that the wines Leonard’s son, Olivier, presented indeed have a unique personality unlike anything else in Alsace, or the rest of Europe for that matter. A thread of smoky minerality ran through all the wines in spite of the stylistic differences, and these were quite striking.
The wines made by Leonard Humbrecht from 1978 to 1988 are all very dry and straight – even the magnificent and ripe 1983 retains that linear core. When Olivier Humbrecht started making the wines, they became richer and more texturally complex. There is some botrytis in many of the wines from the 1990s, but vintages like 1990 and 1997 have fantastic balance alongside their ample concentration.
Undoubtedly, switching to biodynamic cultivation in 1998 was a turning point, and from the first vintages of the 20th century the wines become even more smoky and flinty. All the wines from 2011 onward are spectacularly expressive with staggering vitality. The 2021 is the current vintage, because the 2022 is still in barrel on the full lees. That’s how all the wines of the vintages in this century were matured.
“The time on the lees and the fact that the wines all do malolactic fermentation, increases the wines’ stability and enables us to bottle with low added sulfur,” Olivier explained.
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Domaine Zind Humbrecht now owns 5.5 hectares in the Grand Cru Rangen, with 2.5 hectares each planted to riesling and pinot gris and the other 0.5 hectares to gewurztraminer. The latter are the oldest vines, planted by the previous owner in 1963. The name Clos Saint Urbain refers to the chapel of St. Urban in the middle of the vineyard. Both the Riesling Grand Cru Rangen and the Pinot Gris Grand Cru Rangen are now among the most collectible Alsace wines.
It was very striking how the wines from the recent hot, drought years of 2018 and 2020 were spectacular, showing no sign whatsoever of drought-stress. “The vines don’t suffer hydric stress, because the rock weathers to clay, which holds water very well. It lies below the very stony surface,” Olivier Humbrecht explained.
Although the new wines are delicious on release, I think the tasting conclusively proved that further bottle maturation is always positive for them, the minerality becoming more expressive and the harmony even better. I am convinced that the spectacular 2020 vintage is one of the most extraordinary Alsace dry rieslings of modern times.
– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor
