3 Orange 2021 - Domaine Pierre Weber
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3 Orange 2021 - Domaine Pierre Weber
Gewurztraminer · Alsace, France · 75cl
Pickup available at 3 Cornmarket Street
Usually ready in 2-4 days
How to serveLightly chilled, 10 to 12°C. Opens up over an hour in the glass and keeps for days.
The limestone of Eichberg tempers Gewurztraminer's natural exuberance into something more linear and finely detailed than the variety usually delivers.
Good with: spiced pork belly, or a washed-rind cheese like Munster.
Gewurztraminer from the Grand Cru Eichberg in Husseren-les-Châteaux, macerated on skins for nine days, then pressed and aged for nine months in old bordelaise barrels. Vinified without additives, no sulphur, no fining, no filtration.
The producer
Pierre Weber grew up at the foot of three ruined medieval towers above Husseren-les-Châteaux, the highest village on the Alsace wine route, where his grandfather farmed vines and worked as a vigneron at Kuentz Bas. Pierre left: a Brevet de Technicien Supérieur in electrotechnology, then studies in renewable energy and urban planning, then five years developing Paris's climate action plan. After that he bought a van and drove the Silk Road. He came back to Husseren during the 2018 harvest, into the smell of fermenting juice from the cellars below the village, and did not leave again. He trained at the wine school in Rouffach and did internships with Valentin Zusslin in Orschwihr and at La Grange de l'Oncle Charles. His first vintage was 2019; 800 bottles of Riesling. The estate is around three hectares of calcareous marl and sandstone at 378 metres, split across several parcels including plots on the Grand Cru Eichberg, vines planted between 1962 and 2003. Biodynamic farming, certified Bio and Demeter since 2021. The cellar is built into the hillside; everything works by gravity, vertical press to barrel. Indigenous yeasts, nothing added, nothing removed, nothing filtered. He doesn't put Grand Cru on the labels.
The place
Husseren-les-Châteaux sits in the Vosges foothills southwest of Colmar, at the southern end of the Alsace wine route. Eichberg is one of fifty-one Alsace Grands Crus, a south-facing site at the top of the slope above the village, calcareous marl over limestone bedrock. The continental climate is moderated by the Vosges rain shadow, which makes Alsace one of the driest pockets in France. Gewurztraminer on this kind of limestone produces wines with more structure and less exotic-fruit flamboyance than the variety can give on heavier soils. Pierre's bottlings are part of a small but growing group of Alsace winemakers working without additives in a region that, until recently, was almost entirely conventional and reductive in style.
Region: Husseren-les-Châteaux, Alsace, France