Burnout is an insidious thing, and I will admit that it has had a hold on me for several weeks now, even through a family vacation to Maine. The reason for this is clear: I just completed my first book, Opening a Bottle: Italy, which will be widely available this fall. (In the meantime, contact me if you are interested and I’ll email you). The relief of finishing this ambitious project was quickly replaced by the hurdle of selling and promoting it. For years, all I’ve done is hustle, but it took writing a book for me to feel the toll from it. I was feeling depleted, my creativity drained — the aftermath of a passion project of my own making. How ironic that, for a few weeks at least, I felt nauseous at the sight of a blank page.
But then, I pulled the cork on Domaine Zind-Humbrecht’s “Clos Jebsal” Alsace Pinot Gris, and the emotional flame that only wine can ignite returned. Mercifully.
An Estate Like No Other
One can easily make the case that Domaine Zind-Humbrecht is not only one of Alsace’s top producers, but among the very best in France and, by extension, the world. The Humbrechts have been making wine since 1620, and current family patriarch Léonard Humbrecht (who married Geneviève Zind in the 1950s, creating the domaine’s current iteration) was a visionary throughout much of his career. Among his accomplishments, he opted to reclaim a steeply pitched plot of land above Turckheim and plant it with Pinot Gris. Today, Clos Jebsal is often mentioned as the greatest example of Pinot Gris’s potential in the world.
However, it was Léonard’s son, Oliver Humbrecht, who many attribute as the one who fine-tuned the Zind-Humbrecht profile, taking things to another level. He is France’s first Master of Wine, a title that many winemakers do not seek out. Olivier’s intellectual curiosity and academic perspective have meant that he approaches winemaking in a highly technical and precise fashion. I have interviewed him twice, and he is infinitely quotable. “You have to wait a very long time for botrytis [to form] in Riesling,” he told me once when discussing the other great Pinot Gris site he works with, the Rangen de Thann. “But Pinot Gris will only have to look at the fog, and it turns into botrytis.”
Today, Olivier’s son, Pierre-Emile, oversees the winemaking, and he can lay claim to the remarkable 2023 vintage — an early contender for my personal wine of the year. It is substantial, intense and wildly unpredictable in its sensations. Like a frantic hummingbird in a flower garden, it shifts from notions of apricot and orange peel to roses and lemon verbena with grace and speed. I found myself trying to keep pace with the wine, which is another dose of irony in the midst of my burnout crisis. In order to find refuge from the relentless pace of finishing and publishing a book on Italian wine, I turned to a French wine with frenetic energy.
2023 Domaine Zind-Humbrecht “Clos Jebsal” Alsace Pinot Gris
Alsace AOC (Alsace )
Grapes: Pinot Gris (100%)
Alcohol: 13.5%
Opinion: ★★★★★ (out of five)
Food friendliness: Selective
Value: As Expected
A beginner might like … the blast of perfumed aromas rising from this epic wine. Equal parts citrus, flower, herbal and even leathery, it conveys a level of detail that many casual drinkers would find astonishing. Ordinary “PG” this is not.
A wine obsessive might like … the value of this highly collectible wine. Many would argue that this is the greatest Pinot Gris in the world, yet it is still priced well under $100 in the United States. Benchmarks for grape varieties often exceed that mark.
Note: This wine was provided as a sample by the estate’s American importer. Learn more about our editorial policies.
