Don’t be afraid of Gewürztraminer!

Gewürztraminer! It’s a tasty, aromatic white wine, but that name is so daunting that some nervous wine lovers avoid it out of simple embarrassment.

Break its many syllables into simple units, though, and the fear goes away: “Guh-vurts-tra-mee-ner.” Or watch this wry commercial from Gundlach-Bundschu, a historic Sonoma County producer known for its … well, let’s call it “Gewürz” for short.

It’s worth the effort.

We’re featuring Gewürztraminer in today’s 30-Second Wine Advisor.
Do you like “Gewürz”? How do you pronounce it?

Gewürz – whose name in German literally means “spice” – makes a wine with a strongly aromatic flavor profile that’s well off the beaten path. Typically full-bodied for a white wine, it breathes bold aromatics that often suggest things like the sweet, floral spice of rose petals and the immediately recognizable scent of lychees, the tropical fruit that Westerners most often encounter in canned form in Chinese-restaurant desserts.

Indeed, these characteristic flavors are so typical of Gewürz that it makes an excellent variety to use in wine-tasting education. Once you’ve had that “click” moment that comes when you realize, “I can recognize that grape with my eyes closed!” then you’ve taken one giant step toward confidence in picking out more elusive varieties.

On March 12, 1858, Jacob Gundlach purchased 400 acres in Sonoma and christened it Rhinefarm. He returned to Bavaria and married his childhood sweetheart, Eva, on July 4. They spent their honeymoon traveling through Germany and France purchasing the rootstock that he would plant on Rhinefarm.
–Image from the Gundlach-Bundschu website.

Today’s featured wine is Gundlach Bundschu Dry Gewürztraminer. It is the direct descendant of the original variety planted on the family’s Rhinefarm vineyard by their great-great-great grandfather Jacob Gundlach in 1858, say sixth-generation producers Jeff, Katie, and Rob Bundschu in the wine’s information material.

Organically farmed on low-yielding vines bathed in cooling maritime breezes, the grapes are vinified dry, in contrast with the usual treatment that Gewürz gets in its ancestral home in Alsace, Germany, and in Austria.

A Gewürz of real quality, it justifies its retail price in the middle to upper $20s. Since I buy all the wines I review at retail and do not accept wine samples or other gratuities from the industry, I count on the support of paid subscribers to help cover the cost of the wines I review, so I have to reserve wines over about $20 behind a subscription paywall. If you haven’t become a full subscriber yet, I’d love to have your support. Click here for information on our paid-tier edition. Our free-to-all edition featuring a quality wine for $20 or less will return in its biweekly cycle next week.

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