Famille Hugel Classic Pinot Blanc 2021

It is the most approachable wine of Alsace and also the most consistent year in year out. Not far in style from an unoaked Chardonnay such as a Macon or Chablis.

2021 already appears as the dark year for French agriculture. An unprecedented frost swiped across the country and part of Europe in the night of the 7th to 8th of April. In the following days, alerts kept popping up, but Alsace went through the episode miraculously almost entirely unharmed. But what hasn’t been destroyed by frost was by the worst outbreak of mildew in modern history… The exceptionally rainy and mild weather of the months of May and June saw the development of an episode of mildew, only becoming worse as you went south of the region. We saw our grapes being eaten alive. A dry and cool August and lasting until harvest luckily saved what was left from the crop, but the damage already ranged from 20 to 80% of loss by early August depending on the sites, the volumes at Hugel will be the shortest since 1947. Ironically, it is the drought of September, which will finish to undermine the 2021 crop, reducing even further the yields in juice. But thanks to this cool and very dry weather, what was left of the harvest was in an immaculate sanitary shape! Not a trace of gray rot, and acidity levels that remind us greatly of 2010. Harvest began on September 27th and the reduced crop promises already some very dense and concentrated wines. The rare 2021s will be great cellar worthy wines!

Harvested in the first days of harvest, exclusively by hand, from clay and limestone vineyards in a dozen of the most favoured localities in and around Riquewihr.

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 barrels 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.