A stone’s throw from Colmar, the unofficial wine capital of Alsace, the Schlossberg (it’s only about eight kilometers away), is an amazingly beautiful vineyard, a real wall of earth and grapevines that overlooks the valley of the Weiss River. The Schlossberg stares you right in the face when you look up at it: very steep, kilometers of terraces have had to be patiently built (and restored) over the centuries to make it cultivable. It is a grand cru that belongs to the territory of the town of Kientzheim, and drapes over the flank and summit of a long hillside (the Bixkoepfel). And while the Schlossberg starts in the territory of the town of Kientzheim itt extends westwards on the same hillside to reach the castle of Kaysersberg, which is, as the crow flies, the next town over from Kientzheim (and where Albert Schweitzer, the famous Alsace medical doctor, theologian, philosopher and humanitarian, was born). The entire hillside is extremely impressive in its own right, a more or less uninterrupted facade of grapevines that is the home of not one, not two, not three, but four (4) grand crus situated one right after another (count’em!). And so, if you look at this large expanse of vines moving your head in a direction going from Kaysersberg on your left to Kientzheim on your right, you have all four grand crus right in front of you: first the Schlossberg; then the Furstentum; next up is the Mambourg; and finally the Markrain. These four grand crus give some of Alsace’s most famous wines, but it is important to know that, even though they follow each other on the same hillside slope, each of these grand crus is most suited to one specific, different, grape variety. The Schlossberg has always been most associated with high-quality Riesling wines; the Furstentum is linked more to Pinot Gris, and the Mambourg to Gewurztraminer (though clearly with the passage of time and the advent of climate change some things…well, they change). The Markrain has only recently been intensely cultivated once again and has been the source of potentially compelling grand cru wines only in the last few years. And so the jury’s out as to what it’s best wine might be, though it was historically most famous for its Gewurztraminer wines.