2022 Boeckel Moenchberg Pinot Gris Alsace Grand Cru

Alsace Pinot Gris is the most underrated serious white in France — that's my read after tasting thousands of them — and Grand Cru Moenchberg is Exhibit A.

The Boeckel family has been making wine in Mittelbergheim, officially one of the Most Beautiful Villages of France, since 1853. Five generations later, brothers Jean-Daniel and Thomas Boeckel farm 24 hectares of certified-organic vines across four Grand Crus.

Moenchberg means "monk's mount." Benedictine monks first worked this hill in the 11th century, and in 1852 the ampelographer Jean-Louis Stoltz ranked it among the top terroirs of Alsace.

It's a south-facing, horseshoe-shaped slope of just 11.8 hectares shared by Andlau and Eichhoffen — marl and limestone shot through with schist. Boeckel's piece of it is 0.47 hectares. That's the entire production.

The wine itself is the opposite of the sweet, flabby Pinot Gris cliché. Hand-harvested fruit, whole-cluster pressed, fermented slow and cool, then aged twelve months in oak barrels.

Dry, powerful, and built for the table — the producer gives it a full decade of cellar life. Pour it with a roast chicken and understand why the monks picked this hill.