Spicy Traminer

             

Gewürztraminer, the wine you hate to love, is primed to make your summer more pleasurable.

Loving a fruity white wine with a sweet impression, when you've had the dry wine gospel preached to you for ages, is not easy.  Especially when you try to pronounce the name of that fruity white wine, your tongue gets twisted in a knot.    

Try this: Geh-vairtz-tra-mee-ner. Or, Gah-verts-tra-mener.  

Gewürztraminer (Gewürz) is an example of German word crunching where two words are jammed together to form one word.  The German word for "spice" is "gewürz" and "Traminer" is a white grape with a rosy hue.   The two little dots over the "ü" is an umlaut, a diacritical mark placed over a vowel to indicate a change in sound. 

Rose (especially a heady Old English rose) and litchi (or lychee) are the two words used most often to describe the aroma and taste of a Gewürz.  Most Americans can tell a rose when they smell one, but few Americans know the exotic scent of litchi, a Chinese evergreen. 

Depending on where the grape is grown, the perfume of a Gewürztraminer might also have traces of black tea, orange blossom, honeysuckle and sweet spice, like cinnamon. Oddly, I read one description of Gewürz as smelling like face creme.  

There are more than 25 synonyms for Gewürztraminer, most variations of the Traminer grape name or a form of the mottled pink hue of a ripe Traminer grape.  But Gewürztraminers are not macerated on the skins, so leeching a pink color is not an issue. 

 Worldwide Gewürztraminer 

Years ago, the Traminer grape was common in the German Rheinpfalz, where it is called Clevner.  In the tangled and confusing world of wine grape origins, the Traminer grape was first planted, not in Germany, but the Alto-Adige village of Tramin, Italy.  From northern Italy, the grape was carried to other wine regions.

Today, Gewürz is found, in small vineyard allocations, throughout Europe, mainly in cooler locations like northern Italy, Austria, Hungary and coastal Spain.  Torres, in the Penedes region of eastern Spain, makes Viña Esmeralda, one of Europe's best known Gewürztraminers, outside Alsace.

Gewürztraminer is suited to the terroir of Alsace, on the west side of the Rhein river, across from the German Rheinland.  In the cool river climate, Gewürztraminer hits all the stylistic steps, from dry, to sparkling, late harvest and sweet botrytized wines. 

Historically, Alsatian Gewürz were drier than their German cousins.  But, slowly over the years, residual sweetness in all Alsace white wines crept up, until today, the difference is more closely defined as German Gewürz being fruitier and flowery, while French Gewürz tends to show more spice, bracing acidity, and perhaps, a trace of black pepper. 

There's also some interest for Gewürztraminer in Australia and New Zealand.  And the variety does well in cool parts of California, most notably the  Anderson Valley, in Mendocino County.  

Cool ocean air and occasional fog encourage wineries such as Navarro, Husch and Greenwood Ridge to make award-winning dry, semi-dry and dessert Gewürztraminers, with precise sugar/acid balance and luscious varietal flavors. 

Gewurztraminer at Table

In Alsace there are a handful of traditional foods that pair nicely with a lightly chilled Gewürztraminer, such as onion tart, duck paté, smoked fish and the flavorful French Munster cheese, or the milder American Muenster, with a nutty and buttery flavor.

Gewürztraminer is also nicely matched with Asian foods, especially those flavored with coriander, lemon grass and coconut.  A bowl of Thai Yellow or Massaman Curry and a glass of medium-dry Gewürz ticks all the boxes for me. 

 

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