Famille Hugel Muscat Classic

Not a sweet wine as many people expect it to be, but a dry, crisp and grapey Muscat, full of aromas.

The 2025 vintage surprised everyone with its remarkable earliness. After a mild winter and a warm spring marked by two periods of drought around flowering, the year already suggested a modest crop.

Cool rains in early August revived vine growth, followed by a settled spell of fine weather in mid-August that dramatically accelerated the vegetative cycle. Harvest therefore began on September 8th, among the earliest of the century, nearly two weeks ahead of initial expectations.

The crop proved to be very small, with yields reduced by half. The grapes were beautiful and concentrated, but too few in number, making 2025 one of the smallest vintages of the past fifty years in Alsace.

Rain during the first days of harvest, followed by warm and dry conditions, encouraged the development of remarkable noble rot. These conditions allowed the production of a superb Riesling Vendange Tardive, one of the rarest wines produced by Famille Hugel.

This wine is partly composed of 2 young estate plots, including one on the Schoenenbourg planted with Muscat d'Alsace. Harvested exclusively by hand from the very beginning of harvest to ensure perfectly sound grapes and good natural levels of acidity.

The grapes are destemmed into the presses, and left to macerate until next morning. 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.