Domaine Marcel Deiss, Bergheim, Alsace, France

And so we start our education of Alsace wines! We are staying on the edge of the Rue du Vin, and spent the day driving through charming villages. Our first tasting was at Domaine Marcel Deiss. Domaine Marcel Deiss ranks among the great wine estates of Alsace. The Deiss family—a lineage comprising winemakers, ironworkers, and bell founders—has been established in Bergheim since 1744. This was a great introduction to the wines of Alsace--we spent almost 2 hours tasting wine, learning about the wine growing history of Alsace, and how to approach the different wines that are characteristic of the region.

Domaine Marcel Deiss was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War, in 1947. The creation of the vineyard was the work of Marcel Deiss who has been joined by his son André, to establish an extensive wine estate based in Bergheim. They scoured the records left by the monks who had been growing grapes for wine for centuries, and discovered there used to be 130 different grape varieties—of which 110 survived to modern times and they grow 60 in their vineyards, bucking the trend of Alsace tradition that one grape from one vineyard makes a wine . His descendants—first Jean-Michel, then Mathieu Deiss—subsequently took over the family operation. Since 1997, every single parcel of the Domaine Marcel Deiss estate has been farmed biodynamically. We had fun, we learned a lot and I love their use of medieval art to label their wine.