Actually Alsace

It doesn’t seem like so many years ago that I thought of Trimbach as a sort of boring producer. With all the other action they seemed to be left behind. Just a few decades or so later, to me, Trimbach is making some of Alsace’s best and most authentic wines. They did not change, my palate just grew up. Today other producers are making wines full of residual sugar, boytritis and no varietal or Alsatian character. Now it is Trimbach who is making clean, bright varietally correct wines that actually remind you more of Alsace than California when you drink them. They always did.

Give me these real wines from Trimbach any day over the bizarre wines coming from the likes of Zind-Humbrechet. If you want to actually drink Alsatian wine with a meal, I’m sure you'll agree with me if you really think about the food and wine on your table. The basic Trimbach Gewurztraminer is a charming wine with no pretension to greatness, only balance and real Gewurztraminer character. We enjoyed this great value with some fantastic goat cheese from Monteillet Fromagerie in Dayton Washington – a cheese producer worthy of a post of its own – and you cannot imagine a better cheese and wine match.

One of the saddest stories of the modern wine world has been the destruction of the great white wines of Alsace. A few decades ago, Alsace was the home of some of the most interesting wines on the planet, but today it has become the poster-child of over-manipulation in the vineyard and winery and the resulting sweet, out-of-balance wines should just be avoided.