You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. My name is Roger, I work in beer, and today we are going to be talking about all things Alsace. That's right. We're moving back to wine country, but I have a surprise. We're actually going to talk about Alsatian beer today as well. It's not Alsace, it's Alsace. You can pronounce it both ways, right? Sure, if you're in Chicago, definitely Alsace. Hey, my buddy Alsace. Alsace. You know, Al. Yeah, he's over by there behind the deli. Behind the deli? What's going on back there? I don't know. Alsace is running the Slycer. In the studio today, we have... Jim, Communications. Dan, Spirits. Chris, Wine, and Roger was the impetus for this, because he wanted to showcase a little Alsatian beer, and he said, why don't we do some wine too? So I've got seven wines for us to try as well. Sweet. Yeah, if we only did Alsatian beer, it would be very short. It would be a quick sip. Quick sip. Yeah. There aren't many, and that was the impetus between Binny's, Pollyanna, and Goldfinger. We have done some beer collabs in the past. They've all been lager collabs. I'm always looking to try to bring more obscure lager conceptualizations, be it a style that someone hasn't had much familiarity with. Our first collabs were as Wickel Lager and a Keller Beer. Our second collaboration is called Rustic Root, which was- or Rustic Rout, sorry. Rout Root. Rusted Root. You can- Send yourself on your way. Our second collab Rustic Rout was an homage to a super obscure lager style called a Lond beer, which roughly translates into country lager. We ended up using grains from Sugar Creek Malting, which is in Indiana. An independent malter that sources all their grain from Midwest and they're growing some unique types of barley as well. For this next collab, I wanted to focus on perhaps some unconventional grain or a hop that you don't hear about every day. I've had this obsession over the years with a hop variety by the name of Striselspalt. I mean, how could you not just because of that name? I know. It's a great name. It's a great name. That's why it caught my eye in the first place. There have only been a handful of beers over the years that use it. When doing some research, though, I found this pretty interesting. There was a quite well-known beer over the years that used that hop predominantly. A little American brew by the name of Mickelob. Mickelob was one of the largest users of Strissel Spalt. But sadly, original Mickelob is no more. No Almalt Lager anymore, right? Right. They don't use it in Miculatra. There's something about Strissel Spalt besides the cool name that I always loved. Whereas a lot of American hops these days are bred to be very fruit forward and tropical, the old school hops were typically very herbaceous. So when you look at kind of noble hop varieties, things like Spalt, Hollertal, Saz, these hops deliver more of a grassy green herbal character and they can also sometimes have a florality to them. And I thought Strissel Spalt always had a very elegant herbal and floral character. And since it's a hop that not many people use or talk about, I kept finding myself over the years trying a beer. There'd be a beer that would really stand out and be like, this beer is remarkable. Like there's a German IPA from Bells one year. I'm like, this is an amazing beer. What's in this? And then I lo and behold, Strissel Spalt kept popping up out of nowhere. So I'm imagining Roger on like a PSA for Strissel Spalt. He just turns, it must be Strissel Spalt. Yeah, that's a more you know. And Pollyanna one year brewed a single hop beer and kind of as a bit of a joke at this brewing, it was like the Oak Park Brew Fest. Most brewers were doing like Citra, Mosaic, was all these like new hops and they're doing a pale ale or whatever. Brian and Pollyanna brewed a Strissel Spalt single hop pale ale, which was very, very heavily hopped. It was awesome, but it was very different. Again, that was something I wanted to be a focus of this beer. I also think that as craft lagers become more popular, we're seeing a lot more Pilsners and maybe some Hellas, but lagers with a little bit of darker malt character to them are still lagging behind. There's not a lot of Ambers out there, for example. Some people are making Viennas and that's something that Goldfinger does, and Brian over at Pollyanna makes a Vienna as well. But Mertzen's Oktoberfest beers are probably the most popular beer we sell from a category standpoint. When it comes to Oktoberfest season, people love it. So there's a lot of opportunity for people to brew more Amber lagers. And I mean, you look back at one of the most famous craft beers in America is Boston Lager from Sam Adams. And there's something to be said with adding a little bit of caramel malt to your beer. So it kind of sets it apart and makes it taste just a little bit different from what people are used to. So we set about making an Amber lager that would have this homage to France. And to highlight Striselspalt as the main hop, there are some newer French varieties, which are descendants of Striselspalt, one of those being Barber Rouge, the red beard, if you will. Did they shake this out of some brewer's beard? I think it's a reference to that the hop binds are red. Maybe even the cones have some red accents to them. But what's kind of apropos with the name too, is that it has some red fruit character to it. It has like a current raspberry note to it. So you get that paired alongside the floral, herbal aspects of Striselspalt. When it came time for the malt, Sugar Creek happened to be growing and malting a type of barley known as Avalon, which has some French parentage in its genetic background. It was developed by- Roxy Music. Out in Virginia, apparently it was very well suited and designed to grow on the East Coast, but Sugar Creek's really liking the way that it's growing in Indiana. Those guys are doing good work too. Yeah, for sure. Avalon is the base malt, and then there's a little bit of flavor added. I wanted to make sure that we actually had some French malt in there as well. Malteries Franco-Belgeau, malt group, they put together all sorts of different French grown French malted barley, and use some caramelized stuff for color accents as well as some flavor. Strisselspalt is grown outside of Strasbourg, the most famous city in Alsace, that is located right on the bank of the Rhine River. Yeah. Across the Rhine, you're in either Germany or Belgium up there. Right. For me, people that aren't familiar, then Chris might get into it a little bit, but just really quick. This area of France has been traded back and forth between France and Germany. So it definitely has quite a bit of German influence there. It was the center of brewing in France. There used to be quite a few breweries. Sadly, many of them have faded. And again, one of the inspirations for this beer, I can remember years ago. I'm going to guess Fisher Amber. Yes. I mean, what else could it be? Right? Which used to come in swing top bottles. Everybody loves those swing tops. My sister showed me how to homebrew. I can remember her buying cases of Fisher Amber, that she could get cheaper than buying the empty swing tops at the homebrew shop. I'm guessing the beer was probably close to code or out of code, was probably the issue that people weren't lining up to buy a French flip top beer. I think it was bottle conditioned. It still, I don't know, left quite an impression. So hey, sometimes you need something odd for inspiration. But anyway, really proud of this collaboration. Everybody that's had it has really enjoyed it. So I wanted to share it with you all here, tell the story a little bit since it was kind of a lengthy story. But this is something that I'm very excited to see on shelves. I want people to get out there and taste, pair it with food. I had grand plans of maybe bringing in some Alsatian food today. But alas, if I had an oven, maybe I could toss in like a tart flambé for us to eat warm out of the oven. That would be one thing, but I also had some grandiose ideas that failed to materialize. Nuking it didn't seem like it would do it justice. I think it would have been fine, but here we are with no food. Yeah, no, I was hoping to find some Munster for this episode. Yeah, well, that's the other thing, too. I couldn't find like the Munsters, the Big Cheese, Moonsters, the Big Cheese there, but even just some of the French cheeses, they look so, as we said in a previous podcast, they can be so beat up in these days. Yeah. Some of these cheese. It's tough. You know, the closest thing I found was an American cheese from Jasper Hill, and I just should have bought it because it's pretty good, called Willoughby, and it's vaguely in the style. Interestingly, the one they had available was washed in sake, which I had never seen before. Welcome back to A Cheese Talk with Chris and Raj. For the people at home, this is a week in between. But for us, for Dan and myself, it's like two hours straight of lamenting the lack of mongerers, of lack of cheese mongerers in the area. The thing that listeners should maybe understand about Muenster is that it is very different from what you buy in the deli in America. Yeah, it's not that stuff you get in the Jewel of Steli. Wouldn't that be with the orange on the outside? So that's just paprika in that case. I had no idea that there was an actual legit cheese called Muenster. Yeah, Muenster Jérôme, it's fabulous. It's one of the stinkier cheeses on the planet. It's really, really aromatic, but it is sweet and honeyed and funky and delicious. The reason they put that paprika on those loaves, which is basically a riff on brick, Wisconsin brick. They're mimicking the natural orange rind of true Muenster, which is you get through washing it in saline solution and promoting the growth of bacterial linens and a bunch of other things. Interesting. It also makes it quite stank. The point being that this beer has huge potential for food pairing. Again, you're charcuterie bored. This is going to go well with lots of things on there. So whatever cheese you enjoy, try this beer with it. Once again, Roger, crafting, hand crafting the craft industry. Yeah, and making really, really good decisions in conjunction with these breweries. Two great local lager breweries might I add. Can't say enough good things about Pollyanna and Goldfinger. They're just really killing it with their lagers. Yeah. I am tasting this again, even though I drank three of them on Saturday. That is just gorgeous. Yeah. 6.4 percent alcohol. I'm again a big fan of some of these lagers. It's a little more heft to them. Again, I'm all about creating a lager experience that's a standout. I want people to try lagers that aren't so close to mass produced lagers that they struggle to see the value, remember the name, remember the style. This is truly unique between the florality and fruit character of the hops. There's some aromatic malts in here that are bringing some really cool nutty. I agree, nutty and even I get a little like, I mean in the nutty spectrum, like medium roast coffee ground in the nose, definitely nuts, caramel and again, well attenuated, super drinkable. What balance this beer has? Yeah, very drinkable, very cool. It's springtime, pretty soon people are going to be planting things. If you don't have an herb garden, do yourself a favor, grow some herbs. They are truly one of the simplest ways to improve your cooking, and you'll understand old school hops better, the more that you familiarize yourself with herbs, taste things like fresh thyme, thyme goes well in everything, sage. I mean, it's just so fun to have these flavors captured here. Yeah. I don't think you can emphasize that enough. One thing that really sets a lot of restaurant cooking apart from home cooking is the use of fresh herbs. It's a different experience. You have like a year old bottle of dried thyme or rubbed sage in your cabinet. You are not getting the experience you need or want. Yeah. Okay. Bank of the Rhine, Alsatian style lager, available now before it disappears. Maybe we can twist some arms here and get a re-brew on this sometime in the future. But available to Binny's near you, four pack, 16 ounce cans, 12.99. Delicious. It's available all throughout the chain, right? Yeah. This is the first time we have Goldfinger brewed beer. This was brewed at the Goldfinger Brewery in Downers Grove, Illinois. He made it to every Binny's. So in the past, we've only had Goldfinger at a select number of locations, but even down in our central Illinois stores, got a taste of this. That's awesome. I'm impressed by that fact alone. We do have one brewery left from the region. Guaranteed no one out there knows that this beer is from, I always assumed it was from Germany. Kronenberg. I know it says Blanc on it, but Kronenberg, I'm assuming it's Germany. Every town, vineyard, everything in this area is Germanic-sounding. It's very German look. I mean, you look at a picture of Strasbourg and it looks like Germany. It does not look like what you think of France. Not to mention the food is kind of a cross between hardy German fare and French techniques. Yeah, I mean, it's a very, very much a border place. Well, Roger alluded to it earlier. In the second half of the 1800s, this changed hands like four times between Germany and France. So the Rhine seems like a natural division for a border, I suppose. So it makes sense. But yeah, it wasn't until 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles that it's now stayed French for over 100 years. So Cronenborg was founded in 1664 as the Le Canan Brewery. In 1850, they moved to Cronenborg. They brewed a beer called Tigrebach in 1922. That was renamed Cronenborg in 1947. And then in 1952, they launched their lager that they just call 1664. We are not drinking that today because they still hang on to the obnoxious tradition of putting it in green glass. So you don't need to hear us talk about how it tastes skunked because it's light struck. Please get this beer out of green glass. We should be able to see some Cronenborg finally in cans coming soon. So keep an eye out for four pack 16.9 ounce or half liter cans. That is truly the play for a lot of these European brands. Today we're trying the other Cronenborg, Cronenborg Blanc, which is a Belgian style Whitbeer homage. It isn't a blue bottle, but just extremely odd. It's like I'm drinking hypnotic. Yeah, well, you know, it's got the red, white and blue of the French flag. Does this have orange peel on it? Yeah. Don't you mean red, white and blue? Blue. Suck red, blue. Yeah, it definitely has orange peel. Yeah, very heavy on the orange. I'd say lighter on the coriander. It is light on the coriander, which is nice. It's almost like a shandy. Yeah, it does. It doesn't have that blue moon hot dogginess. Right, which I'm missing. Well, that's the dial back on the coriander. Yeah, but it's still there. It's got a nice, I like it. It's pleasant. I mean, you could crush this on a hot summer day. That's for sure. This is a perfect brunch beer with that big orange. It just reminds me of mimosas. Where's my quiche? Speaking of famous Alsatian dishes. This is available, as Jim mentioned, in these beautiful blue bottles. Six packs are $12.99. We have them on sale right now for $10.99. So at least put your other beer in a red bottle and then another one in a clear bottle. So you can have the red, white, and the blue of the flag. Roger, I'm curious. I don't know about the UV blocking properties of blue. Nor do I. Plus, sometimes when people do the unconventional glass, they use the hop extracts that aren't going to react that way. Yeah, this says hop extract on it. Yeah, that makes sense. It actually has some interesting ingredients. It is caramel hops, too. Glucose syrup, aromatic caramel, flavor, just flavor. It's not caramel flavor, it's just flavor. Hops extract, acacia gum, spices, sweet orange peel, coriander. Wow, that's quite a list of ingredients. I'm impressed that they put it on there. That's good. Yeah, I mean, it must be the hop extract because there's no skunkiness. Yeah. From the blue. But a blue problem, it's pretty dark. It might be dark enough. Well, I'm thinking that if it's reflecting blue, so we can see it as blue, then maybe it's reflecting things in the blue to violet spectrum pretty well. I don't know, rather than observing. In their description of this, they note a white peach note, which I think is definitely- I get that flavor too. I think that actually is common in, I don't know if it's the yeast or the combination of the orange, the coriander and the yeast, but I get soft peachy notes out of a lot of beers like this. Right. Or it could just be the added. Yeah, it could be peach juice flavor blasted. So, Cronenborg, the last big offering from French beers and also from the region. So, I wanted to give you a little taste of that. Again, keep an eye out for cans. Hopefully, those are arriving. But for a true taste, if you want to taste the flavors of the region, dare I say we did a little butter. If you want to taste those hops, pick up that Bank of the Rhine. For sure. I did love altered states, though. Wasn't that a chronic word? No? Who did that? Normally, when people talk about this region, we're talking about the wines. So I'm going to hand things over to Chris here to take us on a nice little journey throughout. All right. Let's do this. Alsace is a weird place for wine. It's very, very far north, but it has some geographical features going for it, which is a large mountain range called the Vosges, which creates a rain shadow. So in between the Vosges Mountains and the Rhine River, there's a long stretch of slopes that face east. A lot of the best vineyards are south, southeast facing, and it's a really long stretch. It goes all the way from Strasbourg, like you mentioned earlier, which is way up in the north. It's to the northeast of the wine growing region, where they famously make foie gras and all kinds of stuff. And then all the way down, go down, there's another major city called Komar, which is right in the heart of everything. You can literally just jump out of Komar and be amongst some of the greatest grand crews here. And down to a village called Tan, where the most southerly grand crew is called Rangundu Tan. That's kind of special because it's very steeply sloped and it has volcanic soils, which is a little unusual here. Mostly you get limestone, clay, some granite. Isn't Komar the one that's like stepping back in time, total medieval? Yeah. I mean, the look of the villages in this area, Komar and all of the small villages are very, very quaint like storybook, fairy tale, Germanic villages. Yeah. If you're a Disney fan, this is I've read that they completely model, like I think Beauty and the Beast, all that's modeled after these cute little towns that somehow survived the war. Yeah. The big one and didn't get bombed to pieces. But yeah, they're truly like fairy tale. Yeah, indeed. The other thing that's interesting about Alsace is it's very consumer friendly in certain ways. They keep the laws really simple. There are only three AOCs or AOPs to worry about in Alsace, but it gets much more complicated from there. So most of the wine falls under just straight Alsace, AOC or AOP. Then there is Alsace Grand Cru, and then there is Cremont du Alsace, which is the sparkling wine. That's it. However, what they do for the American public loves this is they have a bunch of white wines, and instead of just making you guess what's going on because they grow a bunch of different varietals, they actually varietally label their wines, which is not historically true really anywhere else in France. They do do that in Germany, so we... Yeah, German influence. There you go. We've got this cross-cultural thing going on where the Germans will tell you it's Riesling or Gewurz, whatever, right? And a lot of these grapes, like you mentioned, Gewurz are going to be things that people think of also as Germanic. Grape growing is focused on four main varietals that are known as the noble varietals, which include Riesling and Gewurz Tremiener, and also Pinot Gris, which is basically the same grape as Pinot Grigio. They do it totally differently here. And then also the one that probably surprises people the most is Muscat. So Muscat is considered the fourth noble grape. It's generally made in a bone dry, highly aromatic style, good for aperitif drinking. The other thing that goes on here, so the four noble varietals are basically, historically, the only things that were allowed to be grown in Grand Cru vineyards. So they also grow things like Pinot Blanc and Sylvaner and Pinot Noir. All of that is excluded from having Glare and Clue on the label until recently. This is one of the interesting things about this episode. So just with the 22 vintage, there are two Grand Cru vineyards that allow Pinot Noir now, and this is going to start happening more and more. You'll probably see more Grand Cru comes from smaller vineyards. One of them is the Hengst Vineyard, a great terroir for Riesling, but also Pinot Noir. Is that because of climate change? Yeah. Strangely, because it's so northerly, just like in Germany, there's a lot of sun hours, right? The days are long, and it's relatively warm here, and because of the rain shadow from the Vosges, there's very little rain. It's a great place to grow grapes and a good place to ripen grapes if you have that southerly or southeast exposure. Cremont, the sparkling wine, kind of corollary to champagne, good values. There's another layer to the Alsace AOC, which is dessert wines. We don't have any on hand right now, but they do something called Vendanche Tardive, which literally just means late harvest. These are sometimes fermented close to dry, but most often bottled as dessert wines. Then there's something that is the corollary to, say, Sauternes or Tokai, called Selection de Grand Nobles, which has to be botrytis affected and super, super sweet. You know, you can get some botrytis in Vendanche Tardive, but it's not necessarily the main thrust of the profile, where it definitely is here. And I have had some super amazing things made in the botrytisized style. And they make them out of Pinot Gris and Riesling and a bunch of different stuff. Anyway, let's just start drinking. You know what? I'm going to do something a little unconventional. We're going to start with the Pinot Noir. This is actually how a lot of burgundy wineries prefer you taste with whites second. By the way, this is Leon Beyer. I didn't mention. So this is 2019 Leon Beyer Pinot Noir. This is one of the oldest wineries here. Dating the family goes back like 13, 14 generations. This is mind blowing how old you know, your Cronenberg has the year on their their label. These guys go back to 1580 and grape growing back goes back to, you know, Roman time, just like ancient, really, really, really long ago. That's lovely. So the interesting thing about Pinot Noir here is it's always been, because it's harder to ripen in this northerly climate, it's always been very light, very elegant, and not the go-to wine for meats and richer foods here, generally served with fish or something lighter. However, in recent years with this warming climate, I see more and more darkly colored, richer, more extracted pinots, which is why they are making their way into vineyards like Hengst as official Grand Cru wines. Typically, you would expect super aromatic, high acid, very pale color. This is actually quite a bit darker than a lot of things were historically, and it's still very light. Would you say that having a larger focus on the whites in this region is more cultural thing or the growing condition? It's both. They didn't have the ability to ripen pinot that well, even though it's a historic grape layer. Thus, you have these light wines and most of it would go into cremant. So if you have a rose cremant, it's 100 percent pinot noir. It's also allowed in white cremant too. This has a really strong scent memory of if you've ever been in a tart cherry orchard during harvest. Who among us hasn't? But you get that bright red but still very floral and aromatic. It's very floral. I get a little rose petal lift out of it. As we know, you're a biologist, not necessarily a horticulturist or anything, but cherries are in the rose family. That dovetails together nicely. Cherry blossom, tart cherries, strawberry, all that stuff. You can imagine that fish dish might work well with this, because of pronounced acidity, light to medium body, fresh. Yeah. That's really interesting. I think you guys nailed it with the descriptors. There's a touch of smoke right at the end. By the way, some of the tallest bottles of wine I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. These are all in the classic Germanic tall Riesling bottle. I was going to pour, actually, one of the other buyers, they're both located in a town called Eggersheim, is Emile Beyer. We have the Pinot Gris from Emile Beyer, and I know we were getting the Emile Beyer Pinot in today, but I didn't see it out on the shelf this morning, and that I tasted and it was darker and richer than this. I kind of wanted to do that to show the kind of more modern take, but that's okay. What's the price point here? Yeah, we're looking at $28.99 for this. Very elegant style. Oh, yeah. Alsatian wines are generally not incredibly cheap. There are some inexpensive things, but they get pricey pretty fast. So Chris, they're pretty lax on their laws in Alsace, on the wine laws? No, they're not, but they tend to have a very broad scope for just... Alsace covers almost everything, but then everything is either varietally labeled or we could talk about the concept of Jean-T or Adelswicker in a minute. Adelswicker. Adelswicker, yeah. Adelswicker. Chris is taking us on a Jean-T tour of Alsace. That's right. Jean-T Plumeret. I think we're going to go to the sparkling wine now, just so it's icy cold when we taste it, and doesn't sit around through the whole tasting. So we're going to do Camille Braun's Cremont. So Camille Braun, another really, really old winery, also been around since the late 1500s, if you can believe that. Wow. As a family growing grapes, a lot of these people grew grapes for a long time, but the formal wineries that are turning things out now are descendants who decided at some point to make wine or whatever. So this is made in the traditional style, just like champagne. It's re-fermented in the bottle and then disgorged, so there's no yeast in it. You can put a lot of different things into Cremont. The rose, like I said, has to be 100 percent Pinot Noir. Here you can have Pinot Noir, Chardonnay. Pinot Blanc is probably the most popular grape for white. Then there's something called Auxerrois, which strangely enough is a distinct grape variety, but the Alsatians don't necessarily make a strong distinction between Pinot Blanc and Auxerrois for some reason. If you buy a bottle of Pinot Blanc labeled varietally, it might even be mostly Auxerrois. In fact, this wine is a blend of the two and I can't remember. I think it's 70 Pinot Blanc and 30 Auxerrois. Boy, the apple and pear on this is like off the charts. These are great values for people who want something like champagne, but don't want to spend on champagne. This is a $26.99. We tasted on another episode just recently, the Lucien Albrecht Rosé, and that's on sale for $15.99, and it's tasty. Yeah, this is really nice. This is, I think, perfect for springtime. Such a bright, fruity. It's got depth. I mean, there's a little bit of tannic grip there. Yeah, there's definitely texture, no doubt. Lovely wine. It's really nice, and it rests on the leaves, just like champagne in the bottle. So you get all of those autolytic qualities. You've mentioned orchard fruits in this area, just like in Belgium where they make fruity lambiques. There are a lot of orchards in this area. They make a lot of Oduvie out of all kinds of fruits. And garlic, as we tried on the podcast previously. Garlic Oduvie. Anyway, delicious little number for starting out any party, or even serving with food. We have a cilantro from the makers of the Doritos. La Cour, we have cilantro. We're on our way to a walking taco cocktail. Yeah. I can take that. Just a cumin and a Frito garnish. Yeah, or a Frito flavored... Yeah, I don't know. I lost my track. We're gonna move on to Pinot Blanc. This is kind of a workhorse grape here. It is not considered one of the noble varietals, and it is relatively straightforward genetic offshoot of Pinot Noir. Tends to give you a lot of orchard fruits, strangely enough. A lot of apple, you know, sometimes pear and lemon. And it's just relatively light, relatively refreshing. Can drink it on its own, or you could pair it with Alsatian tart for sure, tart flambé. This is Trimbac. Trimbac. I feel like this is like Pinot Blanc. Probably the most recognizable brand from Alsace, would you say? Very well known and quite well known in the States, yeah. And this is another one that just dates back hundreds and hundreds of years. They're well known for making everything in a very dry style. Some wines from Alsace, and here's the tricky part about Alsace, is you don't always know what you're getting, but some wines are bone dry and then traditionally other grapes are made with a little bit of residual sugar, and they're not always the grapes you would expect. For instance, Riesling is almost always bone dry, but Pinot Gris, the thing we think of as light and crisp, is made in a rich, off dry style quite often. Rather than a red for serving with hearty dishes, is Pinot Gris, the close relative to Pinot Noir, but has the ability to ripen and of course, is planted in some of the the best vineyards, is traditionally used for meats and bigger things. And I hope that the example we have will show why that's true. Like I said, often with a little residual sugar, so game with fruits again. So if you have venison with a fruit sauce, or it also pairs really well with the local foie gras, things like that. Anyway, I love this. I'm amazing. I'm off track here. So this is Trimbach, famous winery, very famous for Riesling. But I thought I'd be a little contrary in today. I didn't go with the most obvious picks from each winery, although they do everything really well. Yeah, I've put down a few of their Goverse Remainer Bottles in my day. Something I remember from this region is these distinctive, as you were saying, Jim, these really tall bottles. I like the way that looked. Dan said that. Did you? Sorry. Well, I mean, it's fine. Yeah, that's delicious. It's like all apple fruit. Yeah. I would never height shame a bottle like Dan. Height shammer. I mean, you plunk this down on the countertop and it makes a statement. It says right here not to plunk these lines. It's a very German thing. Well, especially the Trimbach being like yellow and looks like a B, yellow and black. Yeah. Yeah, it'll sting you. I feel like for, again, this is for people like myself that are not by no means a wine aficionado, but I think recently can be very misunderstood as far as if you don't really know the category that well, it's still- This is Peter Blank though. I know. I'm just saying like fair enough. But it's very Riesling-esque to me too. I know you're saying they're known for their Riesling, but just in general, that category is still Marge, kind of reminds me like with cider. People just stereotype it's sweet, Succa Vasa. Right. I mean, if we're talking about maybe one of the greatest expressions of Riesling on the planet, it is Trimbox Close on Huynh, which is a small plot of vineyard. It's less than two hectares in the Rosacher Grand Cru. I mean, it's like $500 a bottle, but it's bone dry, number one, and it is unbelievable. I mean, mind-blowing. For under 100, you can get their Cuvée Frederick Emile, which is also just stellar dry Riesling, unbelievable stuff. So what can you get for under 10? Well, I just want to point out that this delightful Pinot Blanc is only 1999, so worth every penny. Yeah. Fantastic stuff. Organically grown. I forgot to mention Camille Braun's Biodynamic. This is one of the areas in France, along with Burgundy in particular, where Biodynamism is like everybody does it. And realistically, just think of that. There are some mystical aspects to it. But what these people are doing here are just applying really, really old school organic farming, you know, sensible things, cover crops, a variety of fauna and flora in the vicinity, natural fertilizers, no chemicals, no anything. I mean, I can't say enough about how much I enjoy when things have a florality to them because I feel like when you normally throw that word around, like if it's too perfumed, then it can be unappealing. But when people hit it at the right level, it's just so beguiling. Yeah. I know it's something that just really stands out to me, like something has a really nice floral character to it without seeming like potpourri or perfume. Yeah. I mean, we can get into potpourri or perfume in Alsace. A lot of the wines here are quite floral. Muscat and Gewürztraminer in particular are well known to be full of terpenes that resonate in the floral realm, geranyl and smells like geraniums and rose petals. Yeah. Well, interestingly, muscat can be problematic with that. If you drink it- That can be in some beers too. It is just like- Yeah. If you drink it young, I mean, geraniums are not the sweetest smelling flower. Let's just face it. But if you drink muscat young, you're more likely to get rose out of it. And as they age, the geranyl can get louder. And that can not be fun. Next up, we have a winery called Marcel Dice, and this is the 2021 Complantation. So this guy, Marcel Dice, cuts against the grain of what most people are doing here. He wants to get back to what he thinks is the original roots of Alsatian wine. Bottle weighs like five pounds. So you may notice that it has a proprietary name, which really telegraphs what he's doing here, and does not list a varietal. That is because he believes that the best expressions of terroir in Alsace are field blends, mixtures of grapes, not a single varietal. And Alsace went all in with the single varietal labeling and all of that in the 20th century. But he wants to get back to this old style. And there are, again, a couple of Grand Cru vineyards who that allow blending like that. And then there's the tradition of Adelswicker, which this would qualify as an Adelswicker, but he does not name it that way. What's an Adelswicker? So Adelswicker means noble blend. And it is a blend of whatever you want, whatever approved grapes in Alsace you want. And often they are co-fermented in the same way that like American wineries on the West Coast co-ferment Zinfandel with Petite Syrah and Cinso and things like that. Because the vineyard is co-planted, you don't even necessarily, unless you're an ampullographer walking through the vineyard, you know, good luck telling what's what, you know, because it's all mingled together. Adelswicker allows for any of the grape varieties. This has 13 varietals in it. Wow. And it allows for co-fermentation. Now, there's another term called gentille, which is very similar and there are no clear-cut laws here, but by general agreement, if you're using the gentille name, 50% of the blend is going to be one or a combination of noble varietals. So in here, what you wouldn't find necessarily is large proportions of chassalos and clevner and all these marginal grapes that are grown in Alsace. But here, you've got everything going on all at once. It has a really deep, stunning gold color. It's almost like an orange one. Yeah. So this is a color that would generally be associated with Pinot Gris and perhaps Gewürztraminer. So I think the color is being formed by those grapes. But there's Riesling in here, there's Muscat in here, there's Silvanner. Silvanner is one of these grapes that is heavily grown in Germany and in Alsace. But it didn't get all that much respect. It was a blending grape. But there's one Grand Cru vineyard, Grand Cru Zotsenberg, that allows now, since I think 1996, allows Grand Cru Silvanner. So the interesting thing about Alsace is they're very traditional, but they move forward. They've added Grand Cru's over time. Right now, there are 51 Grand Cru's, if you can believe this, 51 individual vineyards that are designated as Grand Cru. And beyond that designation, they are told what is allowed there. So the terroir has to be right for that grape variety. So a lot of the Grand Cru's will grow just, you know, three or something like Riesling, Gevertz, and Pinot Gris might all be grown together, or it might just be Riesling and Pinot Gris, you know. It depends on what they allow. So that is dictated by law. And like I said, there are two vineyards that allow for blending, Kafferkopf and Altenburg to Bergheim. This has really gorgeous long legs on it. Yeah. What's the ABV on this? Good question. 13.5. Nice tartness. Yeah. A lot of acid. This bottle has one of the handy scales on it that tells you level of sweetness. So it's got like dessert, sweet, off dry, dry, and then between dry and off dry is a term I've never heard, and I'm familiar with. It says tender. Tender. Yeah. Is that what this is rated? Yes. This is right in the middle of tender. Yeah. Is that common? No, it's not a very common descriptor, but the French have a lot of terms, and so do the Italians for lightly sweet or just not sweet, but softened wines. So tender is indicating to you that, yeah, there may be good acidity, but there's a little bit of residual sugar to make it soft and not completely austere in a laser beam of acid. In Italy, they use a term called amabile, which is the same thing. Amiable. Yeah, exactly. Amiable. Yeah. Tender, amiable. The way you described it exactly how I would describe this wine, there's a big amount of acidity there, but this is what we say about cider. People say they don't like sweet, but that doesn't mean they want dry, they want both. They want sweetness to soften that huge acidity. So I get that sweetness up front, a little bit of very fruity, almost honeyed character, but then the end is big acidity. And that's all of those grapes doing the work and coming together as one thing. And what Marcel Dies would say is this is the expression of the vineyard. This is the essence of Alsatian terroir. It's as seen through the grapes of Alsace, not through the lens of one single varietal. Well, I love this. What is it going to cost me? So I'm guessing a lot. Oh, no, it's not too bad. $28.99. Okay. I can splurge on that. Yeah. If you want a wine in the style that's maybe a little more aromatic, it shows more of that Gewürzen Muscat in the nose and is cheaper. Try the Jean-T from Jougelle. This is kind of like from my days back in the store, but these were always my favorite wines to sell for Thanksgiving dinner. Oh, yeah. Across the board. I mean, it's easy. These are great, great food wines. I mean, the tradition of food in this area is incredible. The next wine we're going to do is Riesling. This will be dry and high in acid, but this is a classic pairing with one of the signature dishes of the area called Choucroute Garnier, which is sauerkraut. And it's full of all kinds of stuff, sausages, smoked pork chops, liver dumplings. It's delicious. It's truly an amazing dish. And the sauerkraut itself is braised in Riesling most often. That bright freshness really works well. You can even make, and this is delicious too, there's seafood versions of Choucroute Garnier, which are awesome with a bunch of different kinds of fish. This is Huchel, another really, really, I mean, all of these wineries are like top-notch. This dates back to 1639, kind of a youngster. New kid on the block. Yeah, this is in the village of Rikver. Yeah, great stuff. I just enjoyed their Gentille. I tried my hand at the Alsatian dish Bakoff, sort of a casserole stew, talking about all sorts of meats that had beef, lamb, pork. It was interesting. It was a lot of work. Yeah, it's a super traditional dish. I was talking to Roger about it the other day. He even went so far as to use the classic leuding paste, which is just flour and water that is used to, historically in French cooking, to seal the lids on casseroles and stuff. I use it sometimes for tureens and the like. I did it in my Lodge enameled kest. Oh, yeah. You can tell me about this. Dutch oven and this paste. It looks cool and it's the pageantry of cracking this open. It ripped off the enamel from the lid of the pot. That's a little crazy. I had a little extra, kind of overbought with the meats, so I figured, I'm going to do this, a lot of work. I'll make a good amount of it. So I put the other in just a normal casserole and covered it with parchment and aluminum foil. That was more tender than the thing that I destroyed with this looting paste. So keep that in mind. But anyway, it was a fun experiment. Yeah. You can make back off with other meats too. It's just like a slow braised dish and you can make it with chicken or whatever you want. There's a strong tradition going way back that obviously is a very old area. Of communal bread ovens that the bakers who they bake bread and then they're still warm and people would bring dishes to cook in them. So back off could be one of those. You'd bring it to your local oven. Tarte flambe is the same way, little pizza. Yeah. I like the idea of the kids bring it in the morning and pick it up on their way home. Yeah. My biggest beef with it was I've never been a big slow cooker guy. I don't want boiled meats typically, so I want to get some caramelization on it first. I'm big on braising, so I think I could make this type of dish. I did like the idea of combining lamb with beef and pork. It went really well with the wine. You marinate it in wine the night before, then you put all this in this thing and seal it up. So it basically just steams and boils. So it wants some carmelization. Yeah, sure. I mean, you could definitely modify that dish and sear all of the meats before. It's like a field blend of animals. I think I would just make like a really good sour. I would probably want more of the charcutte garni thing that you were talking about. I feel like you use the wine to make like a great vegetable, kind of combine the vegetables from this thing, put it with the sauerkraut from the charcutte garni, brown all these meats or braise them and then put them on top of that. Instead of this soupy, boily stuff. Yeah, kind of like an Alsatian Potofu. You know, they have a lot of regional variations. They make a dish that's basically Coq Au Vin, which is the classic burgundy dish that's made with red wine and historically thickened with the rooster's blood. However, in Alsace, they use Riesling and make a white wine version of braised chicken. Here's a question for you. This Becoff dish was very, I felt, very minimally seasoned and there were like no herbs in it basically. What's up with that? Like where's, like one of my favorite spice herb blends is Herbes de Provence. Yeah. So like what, that didn't leave Provence? Well, I mean, you have to understand that the modern world, you get any ingredient you want, right? And like a lot of countries, France's cooking is highly regional, you know, India, China, wherever you go, the cooking is very specific to the area and ingredients change. Herbes de Provence, you know, they grow wild in Provence. So, you know, it's natural. It's everywhere, easy to find. Yeah, this is very Germanic. It had like juniper berries. Yeah, yeah. Peppercorns and bay leaves. Exactly. Juniper is very popular there. There's some thyme in there, like. You put juniper in the choucroute garni too, you know, you get that woodsy flavor. They do cook with fruit sometimes, and there are freshwater fish in the area, you know, so. Lengthy aside, let's keep going. Yeah, moving on. Well, before we move on, do you have a good source for rooster's blood? Yeah, go to your local live poultry. Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Of course he has one. Of course he has a source for that. What do you think of that? I like that. It's very nice. OK, phenomenal. Very pleasant acidity. A smack of acidity. Yeah. Yeah, really gets you. Yeah, that that kind of lime zest right on the tongue. Yeah. What this recently didn't have, which a lot of Alsatian recently have, is that kind of what they call petrol in the nose, which I didn't find to be very present. Yeah. Jim, you're a big Lego guy. You know what this reminds me of? Growing up, I had the medieval Legos with the pad. Love that. The knights and the little regalia. Oh yeah. That's the town of Egesheim on there. So, we're back to a buyer, and this time the winery is Emile Beyer. So, at some point, the buyers split, like the Capudos or the Bobaks. Yeah, exactly. Exactly like the Bobaks or the Capudos. Well, talk about a lengthiest side. I just brought, I got lots on those. Well, I got opinions. Man, the Bobaks family, why couldn't you get along? Yeah, that's a bummer. Yeah, Chicago, Southside Sausage Icon's gone. Romeo and Capulet ask. So sad. Alas, poor Mercutio. Anyway. Wow. So this is Emile Beyer, the current generation heading this up is Christian Beyer. The other Beyer, Leon Beyer, the current generation I believe is Mark Beyer. So yeah, same town. This is crazy. So tropical. Yeah. Like pineapple. Right. So this is Pinot Gris. So this is Emile Beyer, Pinot Gris, 2023. I hope you're noticing, I haven't tasted yet. I hope you're noticing richness a little bit off dry. Yeah. For sure. Something that could go with weightier dishes, right? Peach and pineapple. Yeah. Like Chris is a big peach guy. I mean, this guy seeks out some peaches like you never, like other worldly peaches. This reminded me of that. Yeah. That's pretty good. And it cleans up on the finish. I mean, you get that hint of sweetness running through it, but it's got decent acidity. You know, it's not the most acidic wine in the world, but there's a little tang on the finish. This wine is phenomenal. What does this one set us back? Yeah. So, I think maybe we forgot about the Riesling. That was $21.99. It's on sale right now for $18.99. And this is a mere $23.99. This is a phenomenal one. That's great. Yeah. This I could see being perfect for fruit and cheese course. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, imagine fresh and dried fruits. A dried apricot with that would be delicious. Again, you know. What did you call them on the last wine episode was Gazebo Guzzler? Gazebo Guzzler. Yeah. Driveway drinkers. Porch pounders. All right. Patio. I don't know what. Lawn chair libations. Yeah. Okay, now we're down to the last wine. This is a special one. I don't have any Grand Cru wines today, but unacceptable. This is- Shut it down. This is Domaine Weinbach's Altenburg Gewurztraminer. This is 59.99 on the shelf. Weinbach, unimpeachable, awesome winery, also very old, started by monks hundreds and hundreds of years ago. This is the craziest bottle. This is the tallest, skinniest, craziest bottle. So the Capucine monks started this winery, and it's now in the hands of the Fuller family. With this amazing woodcut picture of a monk with a basket full of grapes. Yep. On his back. Yep. The traditional way to harvest. You got steep slopes here. This wine comes not from a Grand Cru, but from the base of a Grand Cru, Grand Cru First and Tum, which is a great site for Gewurztraminer. This is just outside of the Grand Cru area, but it's it's what's known as a Leudie or named vineyard Altenburg. And the quality is quite fabulous. I could have picked a less expensive Gewurz, but these days the fashion has moved more towards dry wines. And this level of sweetness, I think, is more traditional. And I think it really works in Gewurz Treméner. Is any of this both triatized? Theoretically, no, it should not be. It almost reminds me. Maybe it's just how it's so indulgent. It almost reminds me of like a sauce. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a lot of sweetness here. Is there is the petrol that I'm smelling? Is that what is that on the nose or is it something? No, it's like flinty to me a little bit. Yeah, but there's all kinds of things going on here. So Gewürz means spice, number one, in German. So it's well known for having brown spice aromas, baking spice aromas, also famously floral. Usually, you're looking for rose petal here. Yeah, honey. Honey, exotic tropical fruits. Lychee is one of the most- Yeah, so I'm smelling the tropical fruits and I was expecting tartness, but it's not. No, no. Interestingly, Gewurztraminer is a relatively low-acid grape and it's often made in an off-dry or even dessert wine style, but it manages to hold together. There's a little phenolic bitterness to it. In a lot of French wines that don't have great acidity, like the whites of Southern Rhone or Gewurztraminer, phenolic bitterness can stand in for acidity as the cut. I don't know if you're noticing that or getting that at all. But the acid is not necessarily mouthwatering here. No. Yeah, it's richer, but the fruit character is pretty leachy for sure, Rompiton, really interesting. It's like layers on layers of all kinds of. These can be like a rainbow of insane flavors. The aromas just keep coming back to it. Yeah. This is a wine to sniff for a long time. This is the classic wine with Munster. So you get that pungent, powerful sweet aromas from the silage and the grass, the cows are eating clover, that kind of stuff and the bacteria that's growing on it, it almost gets honeyed smelling to my mind. This works really well together and often eaten with cumin seeds. You were asking about spices and herbs here, cumin and munster and gversh sheminer. I would have never guessed that. That's super. I thought you were going to say caraway. Yeah. It's actually cumin, although you could do caraway, sure. Why not? I think this would go well with the love style of munster cheese too. Sure. Al Sace made me a turkey and munster sandwich earlier today. Extra mayo. Anyway, delightful, right? Yeah. Yeah. That was quite the lineup. I'm much more of a white wine is my jam. And wow, what a lineup, Chris. Every single line was fantastic. I'm glad you think so because unfortunately, the American public largely ignores these wines now, and they're phenomenal. They have been famous around for centuries, and I don't know why people don't drink more of these. They're just great food wines. There's so many different styles. There's some that you can just sit and drink on their own, and they're perfectly pleasant, and some that just are killer pairings with all kinds of things. Why aren't you drinking more Alsatian wine? I don't know. I feel like the region in general is just sort of unknown, which is odd. It's confusing. Yeah. No one knows where it is. No one knows what country it's part of. Well, you see names on the bottles that would suggest they're German, but they're in our French sets. So, I mean, just like when you go on to a Binny's and talk to a staff member, they're going to guide you through this. You should definitely talk to a wine consultant if you want to dial in your purchase, because as you've noticed that there can be residual sugar here, but a lot of the wines are just bone dry, and people look at Riesling and they think it's going to be sweet, but that's going to be, generally speaking, totally dry, and they need really, there's a famous biodynamic, another biodynamic producer called Zindumbrecht, who puts a scale. You notice that there's one on the dies. They have what they call indices, and they're one through, I think, six, one being bone dry, six being like a dessert wine. Okay. And, you know, you wouldn't even know unless you know. It's one of those things where it's in the little corner of the label, but you can tell how sweet or dry a Zindumbrecht wine is, no matter what the varietal is. And the surprising thing now is, you know, you might go to a Govertz Schraminer or Pinot Blanc and end up with a dry style when historically is much more likely to be sweet. So they would do themselves a favor by not only listing the varietal, but also the style on it. All right. Well, that was our little tour d'Alsace. Much, as Chris was saying, underappreciated region. Rick Steves needs to go back there. Yeah, he does. I think his last Comer visit was in like the 90s. Come on, man. Come on, man. So stop by your local Binny's. Again, pick up that collaborative beer that we're very proud of, Bank of the Rhine, with our friends over at Pollyanna and Goldfinger Brewing. Then stop by our wine department and try some of these phenomenal wines. If you're feeling so inspired, please check out our blog. We even have a recipe for you to peruse for Tarte Flambe or Flamencush, right? Depending on which side you want to embrace more, the French or the German. Hey, let me tell you a little story. I was once standing near the village of Aisle in Germany on the top of a steeply sloped Riesling vineyard, eating Flammkuchen and drinking local sect with liqueurs that were homemade by the winemaker. So I was drinking basically a Cure Royale and eating this stuff and watching the sunset over the river. That was a pretty good memory. Pretty good day for Chris. Yeah, it was OK. That would be your requested groundhog day. Yeah. Thank you for listening to this episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a review. Please tell your friends and family about our podcast. We'll be back soon with another topic, be it wine, beer, or spirits. Until then, I am Roger. I'm Jim. I'm Dan. I'm Chris. Keep tasting.