Domaine Schoffit Crémant d’Alsace (Base 2019) NV

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

About Domaine Schoffit

Bernard Schoffit was a pioneer in Alsace’s greatest Grand Cru, Rangen de Thann. The domaine started by Bernard’s father, Robert at 10 hectares, is based near Colmar in the kingdom of the local vegetable growers, Domaine Schoffit has produced only wine since 1973, the former business was mixed agriculture with fruits and vegetables. The family tree dates back to 1599 showing the Schoffit has always been connected to vines.

It was Bernard, some 30 years ago, who embarked on an ambitious program of buying vineyard land in the central part of Rangen, including the Clos St Théobold which faces due south. Through sheer determination and ambition, he reclaimed all 6.5 hectares, a good part of which had been abandoned because it was too steep to work.

The volcanic Rangen in Thann is one of Alsace’s most famous and surely most southern single-vineyard sites.

Today Bernard is still very active in the vineyard, though he has now formally passed the reins to the third generation, his son Alexandre. And from these incredibly steep and rocky slopes, with extremely low yields, Alexandre is making simply extraordinary wines from each of the Alsace Grand Cru varieties.

Andrew Jefford on The Rangen

Decanter Magazine, October 2016.

‘Rangen has, in the past, been called ‘the Montrachet of Alsace’. The varieties and flavours are different, of course, but in other respects the analogy is exact: these great, complete wines are in many ways the apogee of their region, and should be represented in every fine-wine collection.

Every time I taste great wines from the Rangen de Thann, Alsace’s most southerly Grand Cru, they strike me a culmination of everything that wine lovers revere about terroir, and why they accord it so much importance. They are, in other words, not only very fine wines, but their scents and flavours are marked by an otherness for which ‘mineral’ seems the inescapable term. 

No other single vineyard in Alsace comes close to Rangen for sheer force of personality, and if I was asked to nominate any vineyard anywhere in the world as producing “the ultimate terroir wine”, Rangen de Thann would be it.

After glory days when it was one of the most sought-after wines at the court of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa, visited by Montaigne, name-checked by Rabelais and part-owned by the Sun King (Louis XIV), Rangen fell on hard post-phylloxera times and was actually bombed, mined and destroyed during World War One; Vieux Thann at that point formed part of the front line between German and French Alsace. Less than four hectares at the bottom of the slope were still in vines by the early 1970s. That was all that remained of a wine-making village which in the C17 occupied 500 ha.

Léonard Humbrecht and the Schoffit family were the reclamation pioneers in the 1970s and 1980s.  Laborious work: Alexandre Schoffit remembers his father and grandfather spending every Saturday there throughout his childhood. There were tree roots to remove and walls to remake; the steep slope excluded heavy-duty mechanical assistance and increased the danger level exponentially. “It was ten times worse,” he recalls, “than anything else.” Now, at just over 20 ha, the grand slope is fully planted – but remains a challenge for the owners.

Inter-row ploughing which would take one man half a day in a flat vineyard takes the equivalent of eight weeks to achieve here; the Schoffits say their Rangen holdings account for 33% of their domain, but they spend 60% of their working time there. 

Zind-Humbrecht (Clos St Urbain) and Schoffit (Clos St Théobald) are the two biggest owners, with 5.5 ha and 5.3 ha (increased since than to the current 5.8ha) respectively; then comes the Wolfberger co-operative with 4.4 ha and Bruno Hertz with 1.9 ha. Maurice Schoech has under half a hectare, and there are a number of other smaller owners including the town of Thann itself.

There is no visible soil as such, just rock and stone. Unusually for Alsace, Rangen is constituted of hard volcanic rocks seasoned with some secondary sedimentary material (some of it of volcanic origin).  It’s well-drained, but prone to erosion, and low-vigour – hence the puny yields; but growers say that the clays which do form here down under the rocks and among the roots are high in quality.’

In the Vineyard

The Rangen represents about 1/3 of the family’s vineyard holdings of 18.8 ha, but requires about 2/3 of the family’s time to work these incredibly steep slopes. And the yields here are as low as half those of most other Grand Cru vineyards.

Schoffit’s 6.5 ha is almost 30 % of Rangen and makes it the largest holder of this prestigious Grand Cru, just ahead of Zind-Humbrecht. Their plantings are made up of 40% each Riesling and Pinot Gris, 15% Gewürztraminer and 5% Muscat.

In this terroir Pinot Gris moves into conversation about the ‘world’s greatest white wines’ with the smoky notes coming both from the terroir and the variety imparting a rare energy and intensity to the wines without excess alcohol or sugar and with perfectly pitched acidity. Gewürztraminer is also elevated to exceptional levels in this vineyard producing wines of outstanding balance, once again without any excess of alcohol or sugar and with pitch-perfect acidity.

Today, the Schoffit domaine of 18.8 ha includes vines in Colmar and Niedermorschwihr as well as Thann, along with a very small (0.2 ha) but prized holding in the granite terroir of the prestigious Sommerberg Grand Cru.

Concerning our viticultural practices, all our vineyards are organic, and we also started to work biodynamic a few years ago. In order to show more transparency, I decided in 2016 to launch the official certification of the estate, but for administrative reasons it was stretched over different years. The first wines officially labeled fully organic will be some cuvées of the 2019 vintage (Harth Riesling and Harth Pinot Gris for example), and the rest of the classic range will follow in the 2020 vintage. For the Grands Crus, it will be from the 2022 vintage. The official certification for biodynamic is in progress, but we are still waiting to know from when we will be able to use it on the labels. But as we are officially in the process, we are allowed to communicate that we are bio and biodynamic!

Alexandre Schoffit

In the Winery

Where in the World is Domaine Schoffit?

Domaine Schoffit is based in Colmar in Alsace. The Rangen Grand Cru is the Southernmost Grand Cru of Alsace.