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!

Grapes carefully selected from within the Hugel Family estate including a high proportion from the Pflostig, strongly influenced by the chalky soils of Riquewihr.
The grapes have been handpicked into small containers such that they arrive intact to the press.

Gravity feed presses, no pumping or other handling.
After a few hours of decanting the must is then transferred to vats for fermentation at a carefully controlled temperature (18 to 24°C). Part of the wine (around 30%) was fermented in six to ten wine Burgundy barrels; this gives the wine body without the addition of any oaky character. A single racking before winter allowing the wine to clarify naturally without any artificial cold treatment. The wine is then lightly filtered in spring before bottling. The bottles are then laid down in our cellars before commercialization. The whole of the vintage was corked with DIAM, the cork without cork taint.