Marcel Deiss - Grasberg "La colline où pousse l'herbe" 2020

The Marcel Deiss estate was founded in 1947. The Deiss family is a long line of winegrowers, blacksmiths and bell founders who settled in Alsace after the Thirty Years War and the attachment of the Province to France. Currently managed by Mathieu Deiss with the help of his father Jean-Michel, the estate has fought for a more qualitative production, based on the terroir rather than on cloned grape varieties, the inclination to Biodynamics, very low yields, agroforestry and Biodynamics.

Located on the "GRASBERG", at an altitude of 340 m with a North-East exposure at the top of the Grand Cru "Altenberg de Bergheim" which rests on the poor limestone of the Grande Oolithe. The thinness of the soil leads the vine to plunge deep into the subsoil in search of energy giving a very complex and long wine, marked by the poor limestones of the Grande Oolithe where the vine must deeply search for the ultimate Energy of its reproduction. The Grasberg is entirely tense, tight and complex and bears witness to this initiatory quest.

"As is well known, the wines of the 38-hectare Marcel Deiss domaine are not varietal wines like modern Alsace wines but field blends. Deiss does not produce Riesling, Gewürztraminer or Pinot Noir, but rather terroir wines. The respective terroir is far more complex and characterizes the wine more than any grape variety ever could. For this reason, terroir is communicated (and "the art of co-plantation") but not the grape variety. The respective terroir is even provided in two languages, because the official German designations still offend the people of Alsace and are more difficult to market in France. And, of course, because terroir is “a profoundly French concept,” as the two men say on their website's homepage: It is “as subtle as our philosophy and our language are... It is by essence an object in movement, a work in progress never finished, always reinvented but yet totally functional." -  Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

"Intensely wheat-gold in color, the 2020 Grasberg "La colline où pousse l'herbe" opens with lemon chutney and jelly aromas on the dense and tart nose. Round, elegant and pretty sweet on the palate, this is a mouth-filling, salty and zesty, very mineral and sustainable white with more generosity but less stimulating features compared to the drier 2021. 14% stated alcohol and 60 grams per liter of residual sugar. Tasted at the domaine in April 2024"- 94 Points, Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

Producer: Marcel Deiss

Country: France

Region: Alsace

Varietal: Field blend: Riesling ,Pinot Gris, & Gewurztraminer

Appellation: Alsace 

Vintage: 2020

Size: 750ml