May 2009

One of the oldest cliches in wine is that Alsace is "the trade's greatest secret", beloved by merchants and journalists but largely ignored by the other 99.9% of the population. Like all cliches it has more than a grain of truth in it.

I have long loved the wines of Alsace. I remember the first bottle of expensive wine I ever bough was an Alsace Gewurztraminer made by Hugel with its memorable, bright yellow label. It set me back about a tenner from Oddbins in Queensferry Street. It was everything the wine book I had been reading promised me it would be: perfumed and heady with aromas of mango, lychee and Turkish delight. It was an exotic treat a million miles away from the £3.99 supermarket plonk I usually drank with my flatmates. I was hooked.

However, despite my passion I hardly ever seem to drink Alsace any more. You rarely see the wines on a wine list unless you are eating in the sort of place that has a list the thickness of the phone book and you'd have to hunt out a bottle in all but the biggest wine shops. I can't remember the last time I popped round to a friend's for dinner and they had one of Alsace's distinctive tall, fluted bottles in the fridge.

It's a shame. The wines have so mcuh going for them. Aromatic, unoaked whites are flavour of the month with many wine drinkers and the labels are usually simple and clear for French wines with the name of the grape clearly shown. I suspect if they were allowed to rename their Pinot Gris wines Pinot Grigio (they are the same grape) they would sell ten times as much.

Another stumbling block for the wary wine drinker is those tall bottles. They look like Liebfraumilch bottles and there is the fear the wine inside will be sweet and boring. In fact, most Alsace wines are dry.

So, if you want to be in on the secret and know what those smug trade insiders know, simply roast a joint of pork and pour a lightly chilled Alsace Pinot Gris or buy some ripe Munster cheese and uncork a Gewurztraminer.

You'll love it, I promise.