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There is a small cemetery in the grand cru Hengst vineyard, where Maurice Barthelmé (of Domaine Albert Mann) likes to go to drink some wine, enjoy the peaceful view of the valley and listen to voices from the past. "I know it sounds a little crazy," he says, "but when you're up there with a good bottle of wine, you're relaxed and you lie back on the ground, I swear you can almost hear the dead talking to you."

Maurice is a little apprehensive about telling this story for fear that we really will think he's crazy. But we know better. He is not the only one in Alsace talking about life beyond the grave. Many of the best growers in the area will tell you that every time you drink wine from a great terroir, you are communing with generation upon generation of Alsace history. For guys like Maurice, wine is much more than just a pleasant drink, it is a historical record of the culture and of all the many people who have labored lovingly in the vineyards for centuries.

To discover true terroir in Alsace is to go beyond the obvious elements of soil and climate. It is to embrace the cultural, the mythical, the mystical. Achieving a clear grasp of the terroir-driven nature of Alsace's mosaic of wines can be a lifelong undertaking. Indeed, many winemakers have spent their entire lives just getting to know the various terroirs in their own village - and Alsace has 120 villages! Assimilating the complex matrix of soils in Alsace is difficult enough, but it takes first-hand study to understand the history and culture of these magnificent vineyards. Fortunately, this is a very agreeable curriculum and is very much worth the effort. Let's start with the basics.

The "simple" stuff: Air and earth

The physical attributes of terroir can be easily cataloged, although the task becomes rather convoluted when dealing with Alsace. This long and narrow region has a bewildering diversity of soils, vineyard climates and site aspects, all crammed together in a very untidy package that defies clean delineations. Nature has this obstinate way of not arranging itself in neat little pigeonholes for the sake of us pigeon-brained humans.

The climatic situation in Alsace is well known: the Vosges mountains keep the region dry and protected from cold Atlantic weather. Specific vineyard climates further refine this generality depending on the location, exposition and soil type of the site. There are three basic categories for vineyard location: mountain slopes, foothill slopes and alluvial plains.

The mountain sites are mostly on pure rock - granite, volcanic basalt and sandstone. The soils are very thin, forcing the roots deep into whatever little holes they can find in the rock. These vineyards are very steep, south-facing slopes that get very good exposure to the sun.

The foothill vineyards have very complex soils that combine alluvial deposits with newer material that has eroded down from the mountains. Although less steep than the mountain vineyards, they benefit from the overall warmer temperatures found at lower elevations and have deeper soils that are rich in minerals.

Vineyards in the flat, alluvial plain of the Rhine River valley have rich silty or sandy soils that don't produce wines with a powerful sense of terroir. For that reason there are no grands crus here, and far fewer vineyards than there were several decades ago.

Possible soil types in Alsace are nearly infinite, but a manageable 10 have been identified by the superb French wine magazine "La Revue du Vin de France" as meaningful for winemaking in Alsace's 50 grand cru vineyards. The soils they describe are essentially all the important permutations of four basic elements: granite, sandstone, limestone and clay. But what really makes Alsace unique is the preponderance of fossilized seashells in the soil. These remain from the Triassic and Jurassic periods when the Rhine Valley was flooded. They bring a high concentration of calcium-based minerality to the soils.

It is possible to make some generalizations about the effects of certain soils on the wines. For example, the thin granite soils in mountain vineyards (such as Brand, Schlossberg and Sommerberg) tend to produce extremely elegant, aristocratic wines with enhanced aromatics. The soil is also a bit acidic, so the grapes usually have lower acidity than fruit from other soils. Riesling, however, is less affected by this than the other varieties and maintains its naturally high acidity. Just another sign of Riesling's intrinsic superiority.

Calcareous soils in the foothills often give a floral character to the wines and a rounder, more opulent body. But the situation here quickly becomes very complex as you look at different vineyards. Some have clay mixed in, some sandstone, some both, and in different combinations. The great Altenberg vineyard in Bergheim, for example, is at the epicenter of the Ribeauvillé fault zone, where four large north-south faults are transected by nine smaller east-west faults. This creates an exceptional diversity of soils. The village of Bergheim alone has 11 distinct terroirs, ranging from pure marl to pure limestone to alluvial gravel. Altenberg is a jumbled mix of marl, sandstone and red clay on limestone bedrock. The wines here tend toward fine aromatics, with powerful body and moderate acidity.

The human element of terroir

This is where Alsace terroir really becomes complicated - when you add human beings to the mix. But, in the words of André Ostertag, "Wine is human and the people who drink wine are human." Makes sense to me!

The specifics of site and variety can be scientifically defined, but does a terroir really exist unless there is a human around to capture it? Where would Altenberg de Bergheim be without a guy like Jean-Michel Deiss to record its existence in glorious liquid form? It is the human touch that brings terroir to life for other humans to experience. But, being human, every winemaker has his own ideas about how to get terroir into the wines.

Some, such as Deiss, feel strongly that expressing terroir in its purest possible form is their primary responsibility. For them, the grape variety is only the medium; the terroir is the message. That's why Deiss is reviving the old Alsace tradition of field blends. He believes that by planting the varieties best suited to the terroir together, harvesting them all at once, and then vinifying them together to subjugate primary varietal character, he can bring the true essence of the terroir to the fore. (Deiss decries the loss of hundreds of old varieties that were orphaned when AOC status limited Alsace to just seven.)

Other Alsace winemakers (most, I would say) very much want varietal character in their wines. They feel that the variety is just as much a part of terroir as the soil and climate. They are also more pragmatic in acknowledging that variety is much easier for the consumer to recognize in a wine than terroir. Laurence Faller at Domaine Weinbach likes seeing the differences in a single variety grown in different terroirs. "We not only have great terroirs here in Alsace, we have great varieties," she says. "We should be proud of the diversity we have."

A hand full of the soil of Rangen.

Solving the Alsace terroir puzzle

The short answer is that you don't - at least not entirely. In the human time frame, geology remains fairly constant, and climate oscillates slowly around a relatively stable baseline. It is the human factor that is continually changing, often from generation to generation, leaving us with an ever-evolving Rubik's cube of a puzzle that can never be fully solved. People change, times change and wines change.

The fundamental characteristics of strong terroirs (the mineral pungency of Rangen, for example) will always assert themselves, much like the recurring themes of great literature or art or music. It is only the manner of expression that changes. It is important to look deeper into the wine, into the culture, to find true terroir. Jean-Michel Deiss likens it to reading a well-designed book: "It's easy to become so concerned with typography and style that you forget to read the text!"

Taking the time and effort to read a difficult text is not for everyone. Most people would rather sip a meaningless wine and flip through an easy read. But, like great works of art, the great wines of Alsace can be enjoyed on many levels. The deeper you dig into their genesis, the richer is your experience. With every bottle I drink, and every step I take into the vineyards, I gain a deeper understanding of the culture and the wines. I eagerly await the day when I, too, will hear those ancient voices on that high hill in Alsace.

May, 2001