WTF is Gewürztraminer? (Wines for Fall, Bigger Bodied White Wines, Spicy White Wine, Sweet Wine, Total Wine sucks)

Show Notes

Episode 95: WTF is Gewürztraminer?  00:00

Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair! 

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Caremela, how often have you asked yourself what the fuck is Gewürztraminer? I mean, I frequently ask myself that question. 

And, how often have you asked yourself if Riesling and Gewürztraminer are the same thing? Again, I feel like that is a question I often have to ponder.

And, one more question for you, Carmela. How often do you say to yourself, I really don’t want to order or serve Gewürztraminer because frankly I am intimidated or irritated by the name? 

Well, today we are here to solve answer those questions and solve those problems because today we are going to talk about just what the fuck this white wine Gewürztraminer is! 

Part of the reason I want to talk about Gewürztraminer now, other than it is just kind of fun to say, is because we are headlong into Fall, and Holiday season is coming, and we need to have some wines to share with our listeners that will help them find fun, interesting, good tasting, and reasonably priced wines, and we are here to see if Gewürztraminer is just that kind of wine.

Not quite a spoiler alert, but I do think we are going to find Gewürztraminer a good wine for Fall.

And, in the Fall we start getting invited to parties and get togethers, and Gewürztraminer can be a good gift wine. 

And, for the non-white wine drinker, they may find this wine interesting because unlike a lot of white wines, it can be higher in alcohol and lower in acidity, which is basically the opposite of most white wines.

And, we very rarely talk about sweeter or semi-dry wines on our podcast because we just don’t drink them very often, but we should taste them more often, for those who like sweeter wines, you can find Gewürztraminers that go all the way from bone-dry to dessert wine sweet. 

While Gewürztraminer may not be as abundant as Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio and Sauvingon Blanc or even Riesling, you should be able to find a bottle or two in your local wine shop. And you just may find that this wine has been waiting for you to find it for a long time. Just sitting on the shelf hoping you will choose it. Like the last kid being picked for a playground kickball game. Was that ever you, Carmela? I was never the first kid picked, but I was very rarely the last. I was a solid middle choice. Safe. Not a game changer, however. 

But I digress. In a little bit, we are going to learn about Gewürztraminer, and we have 3 different Gewürztraminers to try, two that are domestic US wines, and one from the Alsace region of France, and we’ll give you our honest opinion about them and let you know if they are good Falls wines  . . . 

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And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should tell about The Wine Pair Podcast. This week, we want you to tell someone who has trouble pronouncing words and when they mispronounce something we want you to turn to them and say “you think that’s hard to say, try and say the word Gewürztraminer” and then send them this episode!


ARTICLES and LINKS

• https://www.hawaiibevguide.com/gewurztraminer.html#:~:text=Gewurztraminer%20is%20misunderstood%2C%20and%20not,for%20in%20a%20white%20wine 

Topic: WTF is Gewürztraminer? 09:45

Carmela, any guesses where Gewürztraminer is originally from? The answer may surprise you a little, and to get there, we need to talk about the different names that it goes by. Gewürztraminer is also known as  Traminer, Rotclevner, Rousselet, Frenscher, Edeltraube, and colloquially as Gewürz.

So, the parent grape of Gewürztraminer is a grape called Traminer. Traminer is kind of an interesting grape because, evidently, as it has morphed and evolved different versions, these different versions have different flavor characteristics and even colors.

The Traminer grape is a green-skinned grape with a light flavor that was thought to have originated in the town of Tramin or Termeno in the Alto Adige area of Italy. Alto Adige is a very north eastern region of Italy that borders on Austria. However, now people think, based on genetic testing, that it actually originated in the northeast part of France and/or the southeast area of Germany.

The grape is actually related to Pinot Noir as well, and the word Gewürz in German means “spicy” - hence the name Gewürztraminer which indicates that this is a spicy version of the Traminer grape.

We have some links to some really good articles on Gewürztraminer which you can find if you go to our website, click on this episode, and scroll down to the show notes. According to one article, the wine is sometimes considered a “love it or hate it” wine. That’s because, again, it can be a little different than other white wines.

It tends to be very aromatic and floral or sometimes soapy in smell, it tends to be on the spicy end of things for a wine, it can be described sometimes as unctuous or kind of thick or syrupy, it can range from dry to sweet, often being created as a dessert wine, depending on how it is made which we mentioned before, and as we also mentioned, unlike a lot of white wines, it is not acidic which means it is often not as clean and refreshing as we normally think of a lot of white wines. It can also be medium or bigger bodied, and high in alcohol for a white wine. If it is a sweet wine, it will generally be lower in alcohol. 

Gewürztraminer tends to not be oaked, but rather fermented in stainless steel or concrete, and by the way concrete can give wines a bit more mouthfeel. Sometimes it is blended with Muscat, but most often it is not a blended varietal. 

While it is most well known for being produced in Alsace and Germany, there is quite a bit of Gewürztraminer grown in Washington state. That being said, it may not be a wine that you find made a lot locally because it is said to be a tricky grape to grow. From what I have read, it has probably the lowest success rate of any good wine grape in the world, and the reason for that is because it is a cool-weather grape that ripens very quickly and can become bitter, flabby and too alcoholic if the grapes are left on the vine for just one hot day too many. So, it is not for the faint of heart if you are a winemaker. So, I would suggest if you want to try the best expression of the wine, you will want to try a wine from Germany or Alsace - and we have one of those today. 

In terms of food, Gewürztraminer is said to go well with spicy foods, desserts if it is sweet, and stinky cheeses! 

And, if you are a fan of Riesling, Viognier, or Torrontés, you may be a fan of Gewürztraminer as well.

Well, I think that is enough information on Gewürztraminer - so let’s learn more about the wines we chose for this episode.

ARTICLES and LINKS

• https://www.hawaiibevguide.com/gewurztraminer.html#:~:text=Gewurztraminer%20is%20misunderstood%2C%20and%20not,for%20in%20a%20white%20wine.
• https://thegrapegrind.com/all-you-need-to-know-about-gewurztraminer-a-quick-guide/#:~:text=Gew%C3%BCrztraminer%20is%20a%20pink%2Dskinned,I'm%20all%20over%20it!  
• https://blog.wblakegray.com/2013/04/washington-makes-great-gewurztraminer.html 

Gewürztraminer Wines We Chose for This Episode 16:16

As usual, all of the wines we have chosen for this episode are under $20, and all of them should be relatively easy to find because I bought them all at Total Wine. Although I have said this before and I am going to say it again, I am kind of getting tired of going to Total Wine. Despite the fact that they have a huge wine section, they are overwhelmingly focused on very popular wines - tons of Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Bordeaux and GSM blends. I guess that is fine if those are the wines you like, but for a big wine shop, they sure don’t offer much variety in varietals. They also have all of these stupid Winery Direct wines, and so sometimes I just don’t trust the quality of their selection. They have what I would consider off-brand wines that they can likely sell at a high profit. So, I am just not sure how much more I am going to use them. I always go in there with high hopes and always leave frustrated. 

They claim that their stores sell over 8,000 different wines, but to me, it just doesn’t feel that way. For example, I went in this last weekend looking for Semmillon, Tokaj, Veridichio, and Fiano, wines that are not super common, but not odd either, and you would think that a shop with 8,000 different wines would have a decent selection, and it was just super hard to find a good variety. So, while the people there are always nice, I kind of think Total Wine sucks. 

Anyway, back to our wines. 

The first wine we are going to drink is the Chateau Ste Michelle Gewürztraminer which comes from right here in Washington State. I have said this many times, but l find Chateau Ste Michelle to be a winemaker that makes reliable and steady wines for a mass producer. Their wines are often not stunning, but they are solid and rarely what I would call overdone. I tend to find them pretty smooth and mellow representations of the varietals they make, and we’ll see what we think of this one. I also feel like this is a wine that my Uncle John used to drink.

There is not a ton of information on this wine, but overwhelmingly, reviews talk about how it is spicy and would go well with Thai food, and for a bit of a preview, we are going to do an episode on wines that go well with Thai food in a few weeks. 

The next wine we are going to taste and review is also from the great state of Washington, which is again the state we are in, and is called B Lovely Gewürztraminer. Now, in researching this wine, I found out something that I am going to have to try really hard to get over. It turns out that Precept Wine in Seattle created this brand for Total Wine & More. Which kind of just makes me mad. Because while they call this wine a Winery Direct wine, what it really is is a private label wine, but they are not calling it that. Urgh.

By the way, I am just learning this, but Precept is big, in fact they are the largest privately held wine producer in the Pacific Northwest and a top 12 American wine producer. They are also located here in Seattle. And, even more, they actually represent some American brands I like Gruet, and some other brands that are well known like Waterbrook, Browne Family Vineyards, Canoe Ridge Vineyard, and House Wine. 

But I digress. Because this is a private label wine, there is hardly anything I can actually find out about the wine, how it is made, etc. so we are just going to change the subject because I am starting to sweat.

However, I have read some good personal reviews of this wine, and so I am going to try really really hard not to pre-judge the wine.

The last wine we are going to try is Arthur Metz Vin d’Alsace Gewürztraminer which is, as you would guess, from Alsace, France. And, yes, this is another Winery Direct wine from Total Wine. Holy Hell.

This wine is also made by a large conglomerate of multiple wine brands, but this one is in France and is called Les Grands Chais De France. Which is fine. It’s fine, but again, it just sort of bothers me because its just big wines being distributed by big retailers and so the small wineries just lose out in these transactions, and we are getting mass produced wines that may not be the best expression of a wine.

But, again, I digress. This wine is pretty high in alcohol at 13%, but is considered off-dry, or what also may be called semi-sweet. But, again, hard to find out too much about this wine, like the other two, so there you go.

Alright, that is enough information and enough whining from me, so let’s get to drinking! We’ll take a quick break and be right back. And, if you have these wines or similar wines, drink along with us!


ARTICLES and LINKS

• https://www.totalwine.com/about-us/our-company#:~:text=Our%20typical%20store%20carries%20more,producing%20region%20in%20the%20world.
• https://greatnorthwestwine.com/2014/01/24/b-lovely-2012-pinot-gris-washington-12/ 
• https://www.preceptwine.com/about/ 
• https://www.groupegcf.com/our-terroirs/alsace.html
• https://thewinekitchen.co.uk/product/france-gewuztraminer-caveau-arthur-metz/ 

Gewürztraminer Wine Pairing Tasting and Reviews 25:41

Wine: Chateau Ste Michelle Gewürztraminer
Region: Washington State, Columbia Valley
Year: 2021
Price: $9.97
Retailer: Total Wine
Alcohol: 12%
Grapes: Gewürztraminer

What we tasted and smelled in this Chateau Ste Michelle Gewürztraminer:

• On the nose: Peach, apple, pear, baking spice, cinnamon, apple crisp, smells warm and thick
• In the mouth: Thick, sweet but not cloying, spice, peach, Tree Top apple juice, a Fall wine, Hostess apple pie filling, McDonald’s apple pie, a bit of a warmer 

Food to pair with this Chateau Ste Michelle Gewürztraminer: spicy food, squash soup, lemon baked chicken, corn chowder, Thanksgiving
 
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it. 

Chateau Ste Michelle Gewürztraminer Wine Rating: 

• Joe: 7/10
• Carmela: 7/10

Wine: B Lovely Gewürztraminer
Region: Washington
Year: 2022
Price: $13.99
Retailer: Total Wine
Alcohol: 11.5%
Grapes: Gewürztraminer

What we tasted and smelled in this B Lovely Gewürztraminer:

• On the nose: Kerosene, flowery, sweet, airplane glue, handsoap, not a ton of fruit, 
• In the mouth: Very sweet, rose, canned peach juice, canned fruit cocktail juice including a taste of the can, clove, cinnamon, some bitterness like an unripe fruit, thick like you can roll it around in your mouth, honey, the pineapple from the canned fruit cocktail

Food to pair with this B Lovely Gewürztraminer: Spicy food, fried food, french foods, spicy buffalo wings, blue cheese, stinky cheese, gorgonzola, spicy potato chips

B Lovely Gewürztraminer Wine Rating: 

• Joe: 6/10
• Carmela: 6/10

Wine: Arthur Metz Vin d’Alsace Gewürztraminer
Region:  France, Alsace
Year: 2021
Price: $19.99
Retailer: Total Wine
Alcohol: 13%
Grapes: Gewürztraminer

What we tasted and smelled in this Arthur Metz Vin d’Alsace Gewürztraminer:

• On the nose: Airplane glue, gasoline, tree sap, pine, forest, apple, tropical fruit, apricot, peach, syrupy, aromatic, white flower
• In the mouth: Soapy, flowery soap, maraschino cherry juice, spicy, clover, vanilla bean pod, vanilla extract (alcoholy), sweet, very complex, lots of body, inside of a small orange, big personality wine

Food to pair with this Arthur Metz Vin d’Alsace Gewürztraminer: Spicy pizza, spicy Asian food, Thai food


Arthur Metz Vin d’Alsace Gewürztraminer Wine Rating: 

• Joe: 8/10
• Carmela: 5/10

Which one of these are you finishing tonight?

• Carmela: Chateau Ste Michelle Gewürztraminer
• Joe: Arthur Metz Vin d’Alsace Gewürztraminer

Taste profiles expected from Gewürztraminer   46:00

• General 
  • The Grape Grind: pineapple, mango, passion fruit, peach, pear, rose, potpourri, tea, cinnamon, clove, allspice, wet rock, and sometimes soap notes. The fruit in this wine is often very ripe, sometimes smelling like canned fruit!
• Chateau Ste Michelle Gewürztraminer
  • Winery: This Gewurztraminer is an enjoyable wine with exuberant fruit and clove spice. Fresh and vibrant, this is zingy with a pear and tangerine flavors, persisting nicely on the lively finish. There's a light sweetness for balance.
  • Fine Wine House: A perennial favorite, the Chateau Ste. Michelle Columbia Washington Gewurztraminer is an incredibly aromatic and spicy wine made in a rich, unctuous style. Intriguing aromas of fruit cocktail, jasmine and clove spice give this wine its unique character. 
• B Lovely Gewürztraminer
  • Winery: Fragrant aromas of lychee, pear, and spice. This wine is fresh and focused with bright lychee, tropical fruit, and honeysuckle flavors. Light baking spice notes pervade the finish.
  • Northwest Cellars: A delightfully floral nose of honeysuckle and rose, lychee, ripe yellow apple, some caramel and grapefruit pith. A hit of apricot nectar on the approach with spice cake and orange. Fresh and fruity but dry  with a nice dry finish. This might be my favorite of the tasting. Go Washington!
• Arthur Metz Vin d’Alsace Gewürztraminer
  • Winery: Spicy notes of cinnamon and Asian five-spice linger in the nose of this delicious dry white. Apple pie and peach notes add to the rich palate, which will pair well with Asian stir-frys, rich fish and poultry dishes
  • The Wine Kitchen: An intense golden yellow colour with aromas of flowers, lychee and passion fruit. After these floral and spicy notes, the palate is rich, full-bodied and well structured.

What do you think about  Gewürztraminer, Carmela? What’s the verdict?
Like it, not an everyday wine because it is so sweet. Super fun to try, a great Fall and special occasion wine.

Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 48:27

Ok, so, Carmela, it is just about time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or other podcast service - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.

We would also love to hear from you about a wine you would like us to taste and review. You can, leave a message for us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com and you can join our email newsletter there, too, or you can just email us at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com and tell us about a wine you are curious about, or curious what we think of it. And, follow us on Instagram and Threads so you can see pictures of all of these wines we are tasting and reviewing. 

And, next time you listen to an episode, drink along with us and see if you are tasting and experiencing the same things we are - it’s like a date night! And if you do that, we’d love to hear what you think!

Alright, with that, we are going to sign off, so thanks again, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine.