TOP 100 WINES OF FRANCE 2023

FRG mesSuekitie.tom French Wine of the Year is a brilliant and impeccably balanced sexpression of pinot gris fromthe 2021 vintage. It’s also eminently-affordable.

- CLAIRE NESBITT

Everyone knows how expensive the best French wines are, like our global Wine of the Year, the Laurent-Perrier Champagne Grand Siècle Grande Cuvée N26. It's an amazing 100-point wine, but it costs about US$235 (S$315) a bottle.

So it may come as a surprise that our French Wine of the Year is a pinot gris, and it's priced around just US$90 a bottle. The perfect-scoring Domaine Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris Alsace Grand Cru Rangen de Thann Clos Saint Urbain 2021 hails from the Rangen vineyard, an ultra-steep, low-yielding grand cru site in Alsace with volcanic stony soils. Domaine Zind Humbrecht's 2.5ha plot of biodynamically grown pinot gris produced a brilliant and impeccably balanced expression of the variety in 2021, achieving an overwhelming smoky and salty minerality that makes this wine one of a kind. 

2021 was a unique vintage in Alsace, with ultra-low yields. "We lost a lot of grapes due to downy mildew and early spring frost," says the owner of Zind Humbrecht, Olivier Humbrecht, whose son, Pierre-Emile, made the 2021 pinot gris. But producers such as Domaine Zind Humbrecht, which were uncompromising in their selection, made exceptional wines. Many agreed it was their best vintage for pinot gris in a very long time.

And though the 3,500-bottle production of the Pinot Gris Clos Saint Urbain 2021 was too small for the wine to qualify for our World Top 100 list, which requires a minimum production of 500 cases of 12 bottles (we require production of 250 cases of 12 bottles for our Top 100 country lists), it's still widely distributed and readily found on Wine Searcher.

The other 11 Alsatian wines in this year's Top 100 are also available for less than US$100. Among them are enormously concentrated dry wines, such as the Domaine Barmes-Buecher Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Hengst 2021, at No 3, and the Muré Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Vorbourg Clos Saint Landelin 2019 at No 7.