Dry white

Alsace Riesling

Robe — Pale green-gold

  • lime
  • green apple
  • white peach
  • flint
  • petrol with age
Palate
Dry, taut and mineral, high acidity over ripe fruit
Ageing
5–20 years for grand cru
Serving
10–12 °C

On the dry, sunny eastern flank of the Vosges, Alsace makes the driest, firmest expression of Riesling in France — steely and mineral rather than Germanic and off-dry, built on the region's mosaic of granite, limestone and schist. The fifty-one Grands Crus give wines of piercing purity that age for decades toward the grape's telltale flinty, petrol note.

Bottled in the tall flute and labelled by variety, Alsace Riesling is the benchmark dry Riesling of France — the noblest of the region's grapes and, for many, its greatest wine.

The blend

A typical modern composition

Where it is made

Producers

A few estates working in this style today — a sample, not a ranking

Through time

Indicative presence index, 0–100Origins & Antiquity — 0The Monastic Middle Ages — 25Exploration & the Fortified Age — 40Classifications & the Golden Age — 50Phylloxera & the World Crises — 45The Modern & New World Era — 75Antiquity0500150017001875195075