What to Eat With a Gewürztraminer?

This grape variety is a pink variety of the white Savagnin, which is found in Jura. Although the name of this grape variety is readily associated with Germany, it actually originates from Northern Italy. It is a variety of Traminer, which means ‘Tramin’ in reference to Termeno, a town in Alto Adige. The prefix ‘Gewürz’, meaning ‘spicy’ in German, is added.

Gewürztraminer now accounts for almost 20% of Alsace's grape varieties. This grape variety can also be found in Italy, Austria, Switzerland, New Zealand and California. The visibility of this grape variety owes much to the name Gewürztraminer, which follows the designation Alsace AOC.

Gewürztraminer is a wine that can be made using different vinification methods, offering different expressions of this grape variety. Vinatis will guide you in understanding the different styles and making your choice.

For a wine to be classified as dry, it must contain fewer than 2 grams of sugar per litre. The Gewürztraminer grape variety is often associated with sweet wines, but there are many cuvées that are vinified dry. It is generally pale yellow or light gold in colour. Dry Gewürztraminer is very expressive, with floral notes such as rose, and fruits such as quince, citrus or passion fruit.

Gewürztraminer can also be made into a semi-dry or sweet wine. A semi-dry wine has a sugar content of between 4 and 12g/L, while a sweet wine has a sugar content of between 12 and 45g/L. This wine develops floral and exotic fruit aromas with honeyed notes and candied fruit, and has a golden colour.

Wines made from the Gewürztraminer grape variety with the term Vendanges Tardives (meaning late grape harvest) are made from overripe grapes affected by the famous noble rot, botrytis cinerea. This fungus develops thanks to the humidity and covers the berries with a fine grey coating, concentrating the flavours and the sugar to produce complex and intense wines. These wines express notes of candied fruit, ripe fruit, beeswax and sweet spices with a beautiful roundness and a smooth texture. The colour is generally deeper, towards an intense golden yellow, sometimes coppery.

To produce this wine, the grapes are harvested by hand once noble rot has set in. The most dried-out berries are kept to produce complex, powerful wines with a long finish on the palate, and notes of ripe fruit, flowers and dried fruit. The exceptional concentration of aromas gives rise to prestigious wines whose rarity is due to their limited production.

This label indicates that the wine comes from the finest plots of the vineyard, distinguished for their exceptional terroir. The Mambourg, Marckrain, Pfersigberg and Sporen vineyards are the favourite lands for this grape variety. Legendary terroirs that give prestige to the fine wines of Alsace.

The character of this wine does not go well with the salty notes of fish. The exuberance of Gewürztraminer, even when vinified as a dry wine, overpowers the finesse of the fish and upsets the balance of this combination. A fatty fish such as salmon, with less pronounced salty notes, may be suitable.

The aromatic intensity of Gewürztraminer is not compatible with this famous Alsatian dish. In fact, this wine can accentuate the sourness of the dish.

Here are our recommendations for the different expressions of Gewürztraminer:

1. Dry Gewürztraminer: between 11 and 12 degrees
2. Semi-dry and sweet Gewürztraminer: between 10 and 12 degrees
3. Gewürztraminer Vendanges Tardives and Sélection Grains Nobles: between 8 and 9 degrees

Under optimal conditions, i.e. a cool place, away from light, with a good level of humidity, it is possible to keep a bottle of Gewürztraminer.

Gewürztraminer Vendanges Tardives and Sélection de Grains Nobles are wines with great ageing potential.

Alsace wines all have their own identity. Gewürztraminer, nicknamed the ‘Gewürtz’, is a wine characterised by its power, intensity and exuberance.

Riesling, on the other hand, is a generally chiselled, mineral wine with a beautiful tension and freshness that makes it very versatile.

You can buy a bottle of Gewürztraminer for between roughly £8 and £45, depending on the range and vinification.

Vinatis offers a wide range of Gewürztraminers: from the simplest cuvée to exceptional Late Harvest cuvées and from confidential estates to historic estates. The cuvées selected by our experts from Domaine Schlumberger, Domaine Trimbach, Hubert Meyer & Fils, Domaine Marcel Deiss and Clos Saint Landelin - Veronique and Thomas Mure are waiting to be discovered, to introduce you to the diversity of Gewürztraminer, or to add to your cellar.