As a young wine person, I didn’t know much Alsace aside from what I’d learned in high school history classes. Since then, my mental picture of Alsace has been shaped and reshaped over and over by bottles of wine from a handful of winemakers including Gérard and Bruno Schueller (quite famous among a niche of about 100 people in the US that are mostly located in the Bay Area) and Schueller’s nephew Jean-François Ginglinger, who has made wine for a similar amount of time but whose wines tend to be slightly more restrained and approachable. 

Ginglinger’s wines are important to me both as markers along my path of wine education, and within the context of Alsace and the wines made from there. Jean-François is not afraid of experimenting with ostensibly “weird”  vinification techniques, but his family has also been making wine here since 1610. Most of the soils are limestone, and while ⅓ of his vines are planted within Grand Cru sites, he forgoes the label because he prefers dry wines and the governing body favors sweet wine.

Ecocert Organic certified in 1999 and practicing Biodynamics since 2001, Jean has most recently given up the use of mechanical equipment in the vineyards in favor of hand work and horse work (with his horse, Boris). He gave up the use of sulfites, the only addition to his earlier wines, in 2017.

2021 was a vintage marked by extremely persistent downy mildew, so Ginglinger only harvested about 5% of what he usually does–he didn’t turn to purchasing fruit because he is both principled and financially able to avoid it.

Links to more info about Jean-François Ginglinger: