The Funambule & the Schist of Reichsfeld

The story of Catherine Riss begins not in a vineyard, but in a restaurant — Au Bord du Rhin, her family's establishment in Gerstheim, a village on the French bank of the Rhine. Growing up surrounded by food and wine, Catherine developed an early love for gastronomy, but she knew she did not want to follow her parents into hospitality. Instead, she pursued formal wine education: a BTS in viticulture in Beaune, followed by a diploma in oenology in Dijon. Her internships took her to Burgundy, where she worked at Domaine Trapet in Gevrey-Chambertin — a formative experience that deepened her taste for Pinot Noir and the rigours of organic farming.

After further work in the south of France, Catherine returned to Alsace in 2009 to manage the vineyards for Michel Chapoutier's Alsace project in Reichsfeld. It was here, in the steep, wild country west of the Vosges, that she fell in love with a particular terroir — the gréseux sandstone and blue schist of Reichsfeld — and began to dream of her own domaine. In 2012, with life and lust, she took over her first 1.3 hectares of vines. It was a start-up in the truest sense: in a region where most estates trace their lineage back centuries, Catherine was building hers from the ground up.

The early years were lean but supported by a remarkable community. Lucas Rieffel lent her his cellar in Mittelbergheim to make her first vintages; Antoine Kreydenweiss provided advice and encouragement. In 2015, she established her own cellar in Bernardvillé, and by 2023 she had moved into a new, purpose-built facility — a testament to her growth from 1.3 hectares to 4 to 5 hectares across ten scattered parcels. The domaine has been farmed organically from the outset, achieving AB/EU organic certification in 2023, and Catherine is a member of the Association des Vins Libres d'Alsace, which promotes local organic wines made without inputs. Her US importer, Camille Rivière, captured her style perfectly: "Funambule, queen of precision, bottled pleasure with a dangerous drinkability."

Catherine Riss's cellar philosophy is one of patience, gentleness, and minimal intervention. She does not own a destemmer — a deliberate choice that reflects her belief in the integrity of the whole bunch. All grapes are hand-harvested into small baskets and brought to the cellar in Bernardvillé, where they are pressed using a gentle German Wilmes press — slow, careful, and respectful of the fruit. The press is not merely a tool; it is an extension of her philosophy: extract only what the grape willingly gives.

Fermentation is spontaneous, driven by indigenous yeasts. There is no selected yeast, no enzymes, no chaptalisation, and no acidification. The reds — her beloved Pinot Noirs — undergo whole-bunch fermentation with daily pump-overs, typically for 14 to 15 days depending on the parcel and vintage. The Schieferberg Pinot Noir receives a slightly longer maceration to extract the extra depth and spice that the schist demands. All élevage takes place in used Burgundy barriques — never new oak — where the wines rest on their lees, developing texture and complexity without the masking effect of wood.

The wines are unfined and unfiltered — Catherine's Rieslings are sometimes lightly filtered to encourage their delicate side, but the reds and blends pass straight from barrel to bottle. Sulphur is used only in rare cases and in minute quantities when a wine requires it; many cuvées are bottled with zero added sulphur. The result is a range of wines that are alive, transparent, and profoundly site-specific — each cuvée treated as a special case, each vintage allowed to express its own character. Catherine's cellar is not a factory of consistency; it is a workshop of patience, where the wines are given time to find their own voice.

Catherine Riss is not merely making wine; she is proving that a young woman with no family vineyard can build one of the most exciting estates in Alsace from scratch. In a region where lineage is currency and tradition is law, she has shown that restaurant roots, Burgundy training, and a stubborn belief in terroir are enough to create wines of extraordinary originality and depth. Her playful labels, her irreverent cuvée names, and her refusal to take herself too seriously mask a profound seriousness of intent — every wine is a tightrope walk between the delicate and the powerful, the mineral and the fruity, the traditional and the radical.

The legacy of Domaine Catherine Riss is the legacy of a funambule who found her wire in the steep slopes of Reichsfeld. She has revived the reputation of high-altitude Alsatian vineyards, championed the rare blue schist of the Schieferberg, and proven that Pinot Noir — whole-bunch, unfiltered, and minimal-sulphur — can achieve a transparency and grace that rival Burgundy. Her wines, with their Julien Kuntz labels and their dangerous drinkability, have become icons of the new Alsace, sought after in Tokyo, Copenhagen, New York, and London by drinkers who understand that the best bottle is the one that makes you smile as much as it makes you think.

The future is one of gentle expansion and deepening. As the Schieferberg vines accumulate another year of root depth, as the new cellar in Bernardvillé allows for greater precision and experimentation, and as Catherine continues to walk her tightrope between the sandstone and the schist, the domaine remains what it has always intended to be: a place where precision meets pleasure, where the serious meets the playful, and where a young woman from a restaurant family proved that the best wine in Alsace is sometimes made by those who had no vineyard to inherit — only a dream to build. The story of Catherine Riss is the story of a funambule who looked at the void and chose to dance across it — and who proved that the wire, when walked with grace, is always the path to the future.