Clos Ste. Hune Tasting: The Jewel of Alsace Celebrates its Centennial

When James and I started tasting wine professionally in the early 1980s, Trimbach’s Clos Ste. Hune was one of the greatest dry white wines of France and the world, and it remains so today. How many other wines can make the same claim?  Not very many.

During my first visit to Trimbach in the small provincial town of Ribeauville in Alsace in January 1987, the tasting concluded with the extraordinary 1976 and 1971 vintages of Clos Ste. Hune. They were unforgettable wines thanks to their combination of power and elegance, delicate aromas of bottle maturation and a remarkable freshness for their age. For me, they instantly became the benchmark for great dry wines from the riesling grape.

Receiving an invitation last month to the Clos Ste. Hune centenary celebration was a huge surprise, because although Trimbach receives me each year to taste the new wines, they had never sent out this kind of invitation before. “The 13th generation of the family persuaded the 12th generation that it had to be done!“ Jean Trimbach, the member of the 12th generation in charge of export sales, told me.

Half the 13th generation are Jean’s children, beginning with his son, Julien, who has been winemaker since 2014. His daughter, Pauline, joined the company in 2021 and works the French market.

The other half are the children of Jean’s older brother Pierre, who took charge of the vineyards and winemaking in 1985 and is now an unofficial professor emeritus of wine production. Pierre’s eldest daughter, Anne, has primarily worked in export markets and has been in charge of social media since 2008, and his younger daughter, Frederique, joined the team in 2021 and is in charge of procurement and communications.

The celebration featured a tasting of current vintage Trimbach wines and a vertical tasting of Clos Ste. Hune, but before we get to the details let’s ask the $64,000 question: What makes this vineyard so special that almost 50 experts from all over the world spent the better part of a day celebrating its wines?

It certainly doesn’t look remarkable. As Jean Trimbach said: “It is not an extreme terroir. It is a gentle slope facing southeast with a limestone soil similar to the Le Montrachet grand cru in Burgundy.“ And that’s a fair comparison of the two legendary vineyard sites.

Clos Ste. Hune is a 1.67-hectare filet parcel of the 26.1-hectare Rosacker grand cru site of Hunawihr. However, the words “Rosacker Grand Cru” don’t appear on the label of Clos Ste. Hune (although "grand cru" isn't printed on the labels of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Burgundy wines, either).

The soil of Clos Ste. Hune is deep, heavy and calcareous, so there’s never serious drought stress there. That’s a major advantage in a warming climate with more frequent droughts. The average vine age is 60 years, with the oldest vines clocking in at 80 years. The maximum yield is 55 hectoliters per hectare and the average annual production is just 7,000 bottles, or just over 30 hectoliters per hectare.

The first vintage of Clos Ste. Hune was 1919, and in 1920 the Trimbach family moved from Hunawihr to Ribeauville to be close to the railway station and more easily ship their wines to other parts of France and the world beyond. These decisions set the company on its present export-oriented course.

The new release, the Trimbach Riesling Alsace Clos Ste. Hune 2019, is the most incredible wine the family has made in recent times, although there’s plenty of competition from other wines in the range, like the stunning Trimbach Riesling Alsace Cuvée Frédéric Emile 2018, plus the family’s dry riesling grand cru wines from the Schlossberg, Brand, Mandelberg and Geisberg sites in 2018 and 2019.

I love the Clos Ste. Hune 2019’s vibrant aromas of white and yellow peach with notes of almond and fresh herbs. It packs an incredible concentration into a sleek silhouette. At the super-long finish it is a masterpiece of restrained power. It tastes pretty amazing now, but just wait to smell and taste what magical complexity it develops in the coming years!

If you want to know what it will smell and taste like at full maturity, then track down a bottle of the Trimbach Riesling Alsace Clos Ste. Hune 1990 (at auction is your best bet), which has a similar structure. It is now deep and mysterious with a tantalizing wet stone freshness at the breathtaking finish.

Of course, this transformation process was one subject of the vertical tasting, which started in the unpretentious surroundings of Clos Ste. Hune's bottling hall then continued in the much more glamorous ambience of Restaurant Auberge de l’Ill in nearby Illhausen during the evening.

The 1990, served from magnum, was one of the highlights of the dinner, but there were many other stunning wines, like the Trimbach Riesling Alsace Clos Ste. Hune 2012, which was also served from a magnum. The combination of its smoky personality, northerly coolness  and incredible vitality stunned everyone. However, 2012 was not a special vintage that's well remembered. Clos Ste. Hune often shines in years like that.

Collectors should note that Clos Ste. Hune has only been commercialized in magnums since the 2007 vintage. Prices for single bottles are around $300 (288 euros), and magnums cost a bit more than double that.

When I talked to family members about the wines, they all stressed that Clos Ste. Hune is the ultimate expression of the Trimbach style. Internally it is referred to as “Riesling 1," which I think says a lot about how they see it.

All the Trimbach wines have aging potential, and even the entry-level products taste good at five, six, or seven years of age. This is because of two things. First, as Julien Trimbach explained, “We bottle early for freshness." Second, Pierre’s motto in the press house and the cellar has always been, “balance, balance, balance!"

But there’s more than that, and Anne Trimbach put it best when she said: “It is the wine that has given me goosebumps the most. Clos Ste. Hune is a kind of music that gives me goosebumps!"

The last dry wine of the evening was the Trimbach Riesling Alsace Clos Ste. Hune 1967, which was deeply honeyed and rich, yet still dry and full of life. It was a tribute to Pierre Trimbach’s predecessor in the cellar, Bernard Trimbach who made the wines from 1953. He is now 92 years old.

1967 was also the vintage with which Trimbach launched their famous dry riesling Cuvée Fréderic Emile, a blend of wines from the grand cru sites of Geisberg and Osterberg sites of Ribeauville. It and Clos Ste. Hune were a team, just like Bernard Trimbach and his brother Hubert, who traveled the world selling the company’s wines for half a century. Together they made Trimbach world famous.

“My father very rarely opened a bottle of Clos Ste. Hune,” Jean added, but it certainly wasn’t a mistake that the 12th or 13th generations of the Trimbach family made at this unique celebration.

On a personal note, I got to taste the 1976 and 1971 vintages again. Read the notes below to find out how well they stood up to 37 years of additional aging after I first tasted them.

– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor

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