Crémant d'Alsace

Many wars, unfavorable economical circumstances and keeping of obsolete laws led through the following centuries Alsatian wine next to the depths.

Julien Dopff au Moulin[2] from Riquewihr has been the first Alsatian winemaker to adapt the méthode champenoise after attending a demonstration during the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

He started to sell the Champagne Dopff after a two years training period in Épernay by proceeding to a second fermentation in bottles.

After World War I and Alsace's return into France, the transposition of the French 1905-law about designation of origin forbade the use of the word Champagne.

The distinction between both products came by Pierre Hussherr, an earlier manager of Wolfberger, who retrieved the term Crémant, then obsolete in Champagne.

Crémant d'Alsace is produced in north-eastern France, in the region Alsace, nearly in the whole Alsatian vineyard but mainly in Barr, Bennwihr, Eguisheim.

The vineyard stays on the lower slopes of the Vosges Mountains, on the fault zone of the graben, covered by alluvial fans of the many rivers and creeks flowing from the nearby heights.

This explains the variety of the subsurface materials and their succession forming a true mosaic: limestones, granites, shales, gneiss or sandstones.

Finally, the plain consists of a thick layer of alluvium deposited by the Rhine (silt and gravels).

In 2004, the grape harvest for Crémant d'Alsace elaboration represented 214,946 hectolitres, showing a rise of 35.6% compared with the mean of the five latest years.

A tenth of its production was exported, mainly into Belgium, Germany, Denmark, United States, Sweden, Switzerland and Netherlands (decreasingly ordered).