Gewurztraminer ESTATE 2016

Originally from northern Italy, this is the emblematic grape of our region due to its slow maturation with cool nights giving its full varietal expression. Dry but full and intensely aromatic.

After three years of extremely low yields, we can at last say 2016 has been a generous vintage! Unlike most of France, which has been severely hit by hail and frost, Alsace was probably the luckiest of the major wine regions this year. The vintage can really be divided in two halves as weather, which caused us great concern initially, then took a turn for the better around the end of June.
Spring did not unfold without incident, with a few frost alerts in April and even in the beginning of May, followed by the wettest month of June (157mm) in decades! Careful monitoring of the vineyards was key with an outbreak of mildew, extremely rare in the region.
The only window of bright sun during Spring came at the end of June, just in time for a perfect and, for the least, complete blossoming between June 17 and 21.
Summer came out very dry and hot and harvest saw dry and cool conditions (only three real days of rain in seven weeks) resulting in perfect sanitary status across all grape varieties. Due to the late vintage, harvesting started extremely slowly on September 27, one of the latest and longest campaigns of the recent years.
2016 is the first vintage in over a decade that hasn’t seen the production of any botrytis wines at Hugel; due to the late vintage and the optimum health of the grapes, noble rot did not develop, resulting in a classic vintage for dry wines only.

Selection of the best plots of the Hugel family estate situated in Riquewihr in its most prestigious crus.
The unique clay soils of Riquewihr gives a characteristic richness to wines from this remarkable terroir.

The grapes are taken in small tubs to the presses, which are filled by gravity, without any pumping or other mechanical intervention.

After pressing, the must is decanted for a few hours, then fermented in temperature-controlled vats (at 18 to 24°C). The wine is racked just once, before natural clarification during the course of the winter. The following spring, the wine is lightly filtered just before bottling, and the bottles are then aged in our cellars until released for sale. The whole production of this wine is closed with DIAM the cork without the risk of cork taint.