Alsace, devoted
to wine.
Meditative villages, 16th-century architecture, and natural wine fairs in garden nurseries — field notes from the Salon du Vin Libre and Trouble Fête, Mittelbergheim.
Alsace, my favourite region in France. Beautiful meditative villages, stunning 16th-century architecture, lovely people and great countryside. A great place for walking or biking, from village to village, cellar to winstub. It's the most devoted region of France to wine — it's deep-rooted, flavoured with an Alsatian accent, or German even.
We met an old woman strolling up the road in Mittelbergheim. She spoke to us in Alsatian, complaining that there were too many French now…
Turns out no one wants to be French in France unless the World Cup's on.
Alsatians, Basques, Bretons, and the Marseillais — all their own cultures, language and history, dialect, food, the whole show.
01Salon du Vin Libre
This is one of the best settings for a natural wine fair: EARL Herzog, at the Biotope d'Isa et Yvon, a lush floral garden and plant nursery with a duck pond, greenhouses, and art installations — a few hundred metres south of the centre of Mittelbergheim, in the middle of two hills in Alsace.
Luckily not too hot: 18–29 degrees, with a fleeting rainstorm that lasted a couple of minutes — nowhere near enough, I may add. Some, if not most, of the east of France has seen little or no rainfall, with extreme heat for extended periods lasting up to two months and highs of 46. Pretty nuts — end-of-the-world shit.
This is reflected in the grapes: sure, the foliage is in great nick, but the raisins are not great — they need much more water to ripen.
02Trouble Fête
Winemakers
- Léonard Dietrich
- Léo Dirringer
- Ferme des 9 Chemins
- Anaïs Fanti
- Julien Meyer
- Domaine du Val — Raisin Sauvage
- Pierre Weber
- Les Vignes du Vingabond
- Catherine Riss
- Domaine TERLA
- Le Haut des Champs
- Du Vert au Vin
Guests
- Brasserie Mosaïque
- Domaine des Bodines
Pierre Weber wasn't supposed to end up here. Son of an oenologist, grandson of a vigneron, he spent years in Paris offices trying to save the planet as an environmental engineer. Then a van trip along the Silk Road changed everything. He came back, took over his late grandfather's 4 hectares — including a hectare of Grand Cru Eichberg — and that was that.
The Wines — 100% natural vinification, zero sulfur at any stage.
Hits
La Commune — Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Sylvaner, Riesling, Gewurztraminer
L — three days maceration, then 11 months on lees in barrique
Karnage is a pure négoce (grape-buying) natural wine project based in the Jura, founded in 2020 by two heavyweights of the French natural wine scene. The wines are really excellent quality for the price, and the labels are striking — bold, busquets-style artwork that jumps off the shelf.
Charles Dagand — co-founder of Domaine de l'Octavin (2005) alongside Alice Bouvot, one of the most influential names in natural wine. Charles brought serious cellar pedigree to the project.
Stéphane Planche — an Arbois-based wine merchant who has run Les Jardins de St-Vincent, a cave specializing in zero-additive wines, since 2002. He was the local expert with deep connections to growers and the Jura scene.
The project sources certified organic grapes from across France and vinifies them in Abergement-le-Grand in the Jura. In 2023, Charles stepped back and Stéphane took sole command, continuing with the same zero-zero philosophy: wild yeast, no additives, no filtration — pure grape juice.
03The Fair in Pictures
