Riesling Rediscovered by John Winthrop Haeger

Author:John Winthrop Haeger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520275454
Publisher: University of California Press

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Clos Windsbuhl

Hunawihr, Haut-Rhin

Clos Windsbuhl, which resembles a genteel and well-manicured farm, presides over a pastoral vale less than half a kilometer from the center of Hunawihr, on the VV111 road that winds southwest to Riquewihr. Now planted almost entirely to vines, Windsbuhl covers a modest south- and southeast-facing hillside, from the top of which Hunawihr’s famous fortified church is clearly visible. A large, three-story, mansard-roofed manor house constructed circa 1760 occupies the top of the farm, where arable land meets the treeline, about 350 meters above sea level. The bottom of the vineyard is bounded by the VV111 road, 50 meters downhill from the house.

The Windsbuhl name dates from 1668, when an itinerant preacher named Joachim Stoll (1615–78) took up residence on the “windy hill” to escape an epidemic that was ravaging nearby Ribeauvillé. Before 1668, Windsbuhl had been called Erlach, a name that persists to this day as a lieu-dit within Clos Windsbuhl, while a hyphenated conjugation of both names—Erlach-Windsbuhl—is used to designate a property larger than the walled vineyard, comprising adjacent fields, arable land, and chestnut forest. Although some or all of the property was apparently leased to third parties for long periods between the 14th and 18th centuries, title was held by various members and branches of the Austrian Hapsburgs until 1648, when it passed (along with Hapsburg properties in various Alsatian towns) to the Kingdom of France under terms of the Treaty of Westphalia. After the French Revolution, ownership was transferred to a succession of wealthy Alsatian families, the Pasquays first, then the Hoffmanns, and finally Albert Meyer, a Strasbourgeois who acquired the entire property in the 1880s, substantially reconfigured the vineyard, and farmed it wisely. (See Becker 1912 for a reconstruction of its history at the turn of the past century.)

Wines made at Windsbuhl in the 18th and 19th centuries enjoyed a considerable reputation, and the site—along with Geisberg (Ribeauvillé), Schoenenbourg (Riquewihr), Hengst (Wintzenheim), and Rangen (Thann)—appears in a list of exceptional vineyards compiled by Georges Spetz (1844–1914), an Alsatian industrialist, philanthropist, and gourmet whose books on Alsatian gastronomy and folklore were widely read at the turn of the past century and whose assessment of vineyards is still quoted by vintners. Yet the wines made from Windsbuhl fruit in the 1970s and ’80s by the Cave coopérative de Hunawihr, sold as Domaine de Windsbuhl, were reportedly undistinguished, owing largely to a tenant farmer’s disinterest, which had sent the property into steep decline. Windsbuhl’s historic reputation nonetheless attracted Léonard Humbrecht’s attention late in the 1980s. Humbrecht arranged with Bérengère Meyer, the widow of Albert Meyer’s son, that Zind-Humbrecht (see below) would assume responsibility for viticulture at Windsbuhl from 1987 onward, make Windsbuhl wines under the Zind-Humbrecht name from 1988 onward, and purchase all 6 hectares under vine outright in 1989. Humbrecht expected that Pinot Gris would emerge as the site’s best performer, and therefore he chose Pinot Gris and Chardonnay (the latter is now used, along with Auxerrois, to make Zind-Humbrecht’s Pinot d’Alsace) to replace the tenant farmer’s misconceived replantings.

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