Gewurztraminer Kaefferkopf

A wine for fine cuisine. It perfectly pairs with foie gras, cheeses (Bleu de Bresse, Maroilles, Roquefort, Munster,...), as well as exotic and spicy dishes and slightly sweet desserts. But more audacious pairing doesn’t frighten this wine … for example it’s perfect with spicy-coated duck foie gras or crayfish in curry sauce.

Riesling Kaefferkopf

Seawater and river-based products can easily be exalted by Riesling Kaefferkopf wine, in particular cooked fish and crustaceans. But it would also be great with regional cooking – like a Baeckaoffa for example.

Pinot Gris Kaefferkopf

It pairs wonderfully with subtle and complex dishes like a «sweet and sour» duck breast fillet, goose foie gras or a Bresse fatted chicken.

Location

Divided into several units which surround the charming village of Ammerschwihr, Kaefferkopf stretches over the back side of the Vosges mountain range. The wine-growing area of 71 hectares faces the east and south, nestled between three west-east facing valleys which are excluded from the Grand Cru boundaries. The vineyard slope goes from 35% at the peak and decreases to around 5% when touching the plain.

Soil

It is characterised by a complex geological substrate.

In the upper part, the vineyard mostly sits on granite – magmatic granite from northern Kaysersberg, and two-mica granite to the south.

The north-south facing fault area delimits a sagging compartment at the bottom of the slope which reveals sandstone from the Vosges, shelly limestone as well as Keuper-unit clay.

These entity-specific soils are enhanced with granitic talus fallen from the mountains. Some loess layers cover the various previous parent rocks.

Finally, the slope bottom which connects to the Rhine plain is alluvial deposit and essentially granite-based.

The shared characteristic of all these soils is their saturation in calcium and magnesium.

Microclimate

The vines are terraced between 230 and 350m in altitude, well sheltered from the Vosges mountain range. The latter culminates here at 1300m and protects the area from fresh and humid winds coming from the Atlantic. Consequently, rainfall here is about 600 mm a year. The sub-Vosges hills located to the north also protect Kaefferkopf from cold north winds. So here the vines boast a climate which favours early grape ripening regardless the variety.

Grape varieties

The four Grand Cru-authorised varietals are found here in this terroir with Gewurztraminer being the major variety. The upper vineyard does not encourage noble rot and is great for producing Vendanges Tardives.

Heritage transmission

The Kaefferkopf terroir was already mentioned as of 1338 in a land registry belonging to the Pairis abbey land registry in Ammerschwihr. It is also found in several works and theses throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

En 1931, les propriétaires de vignes de la commune d'Ammerschwihr, forts de la qualité et du succès commercial de leurs vins, demandent à protéger l'usage du nom Kaefferkopf auprès du Tribunal de Grande Instance de Colmar. Therefore in 1932 – about forty years after the appearance of the AOC Alsace Grand Cru, Kaefferkopf became the first lieu-dit to be recognised and delimited by means of a legal decision.

Depuis, l'ensemble de ces vignerons s'est engagé dans un respect du terroir, de la tradition viticole et de la qualité des vins. An authenticity rewarded in fine by being classed a Grand Cru in 2007, and illuminating the sky of the Alsace Grands Crus, like its fifty-first star.
Besides the historical aspect, let’s remember that the Ammerschwihr wine-makers were the first in Alsace to significantly undertake blending varietals to produce terroir wines, marketed under the name Kaefferkopf, without the standard varietal labelling.

Wine-makers also have their own guild, the Confrérie de Amis d’Ammerschwihr et du Kaefferkopf. Created in 1984, it presently has nearly a thousand ambassadors worldwide and has a wine-library boasting five thousand bottles of ancient vintage-year Kaefferkopf wines!

Beloved vineyards and land

Specific rules

Producing Kaefferkopf Grand Cru demands a rigorous respect of the specifications book, as well as following all the wine-growing aspects: environmental respect, number of buds per vine stock, vine density, foliage height, harvest dates, manual harvesting, yield management, grape ripening, cellar hygiene and oenological practices.

If blending varietals is not standard for the Alsace Grands Crus, this practice nevertheless has been accepted in Kaefferkopf.

The proportion of varietals for blending dates back to ancestral practices:

• Gewurztraminer: between 60 and 80%
• Riesling: between 10 and 40%
• Pinot Gris: maximum 30%
• Muscat: maximum 10%

Kaefferkopf is cultivated by around a hundred wine-makers from Ammerschwihr, Katzenthal and nearby municipalities of the Grand Cru. Their vines are fervidly maintained by wine-makers, aware of the necessity to respect the unique quality of this farmed site. Most of them have committed themselves to further respect this nature by undertaking sustainable, organic or biodynamic farming. Walkers can easily notice that the Kaefferkopf vineyards are mostly ploughed and covered with grass.