Domaine Albert Boxler

Niedermorschwihr, Alsace

Jean Boxler, now joined by his son Louis Boxler, is the 11th generation producer of Alsace's most iconic traditionalist estate, Domaine Albert Boxler.  To quote the great Kermit Lynch, a lodestar for our vocation as importers qua curators, "Intense and serious about his land, his craft, and his wine, Jean is the genius behind what are certainly some of the finest white wines in Alsace (and the world)." I could not have said it better. In meeting with Jean, the gravity of his tenure at the helm of this estate is one he carries with an even and peaceful demeanour. We endeavour always to find producers who are farm the wine, focused on growing the best possible fruit above all else, and Jean may be the high watermark for this kind of commitment. This is an estate that eschews even a website. As much time and energy as possible is spent in his steep vineyards, where he attends to his wizened old vines with the affect of a gardener. In all, Jean makes an impressive 25 different wines each year, give or take, from a total of only 13 hectares. They are sought after by the best restaurants in the world, where they are largely destined, so the opportunity to see them in Alberta is a dream come true.

Domaine Albert Boxler holds roughly one-tenth of the hectarage of Jean's friends and neighbors, fellow Alsatian luminaries like Trimbach, Zind-Humbrecht, and Weinbach, so his wines are far more difficult to lay hold of, no less for their tightly restricted yields than for their immense collectability and age-worthiness. Jean Boxler is particularly known for his quintessential expressions of two of Alsace’s most illustrious Grand Crus : Brand and Sommerberg. These steep slopes bracket his home village of Niedermorschwihr. With regard to Brand Grand Cru, Boxler’s examples share top-billing with Olivier Humbrecht as the quintessential expressions of this famously ripe and generous terroir, known since the middle ages for its warmth of fruit and purity of expression—brand means burnt in German, harking to other famous slopes like Cornas (celtic) and Côte-Rôtie (latin). Meanwhile, in Sommberberg Grand Cru the producer-of-record is hands-down Domaine Albert Boxler. His wines are considered the high-watermark of this gnarly terroir’s expression, famed for its elegance and loved for being as beguiling both when young and with age. 

The entire Boxler estate is organic certified for over twenty years (though he does not feel it necessary to include this on the label), and the laborious farming is done entirely by hand for the ultimate precision, using the smallest and lightest of tractors to transport where needed, avoiding soil compression, and never ever fertilizing. Ever. He describes his approach as "slow and observant." And, most importantly, as it dictates the style I and so many others adore in Jean's wines, he waits for natural maturity in the vineyards before picking. The result is that his wines show more fruit sweetness and body (while remaining sublimely poised) and harken back to a pre-war time (and a fashion) when the wines of grand cru Sommerberg and Brand commanded higher prices than grand cru Burgundies on the restaurant wine lists of the time.

In the cellar, Jean's hard-won, intoxicatingly ripe fruit sees goes into pneumaticc presses for a glacially slow 8-14 hour pressing that allows the fruit to see some maceration and add character without losing precision. The wine is then moved by gravity only (no pumps, so as not to bruise the juice) from the press to his beautiful Alsatian foudres, large heirloom barrels, some of which are over a century old. When new barrels are needed, he uses barrels that are at least five vintages old so as not to introducer toasted oak flavours into his whites. With the exception of the Crémant (which ages first in stainless steel before second fermentation), every wine is fermented and aged identically to control the winemaking variable in order to preserve a clear picture into the differences of terroir. The wines ferment and age eleven months in foudre, as tradition dictates. The wine is usually on its lees until the time of bottling though he may rack it off if it is getting too reductive. At the time of bottling, the wines undergo a scant sulphuring and a very light filtration to insure their travel- and age-worthiness.

And so just like that, year after year, Domaine Albert Boxler catches lightning in a bottle. Nothing fancy or experimental: it's simply the vigilant, mindful work among the vines and then wines made in accordance with tradition with an attentive monitoring of each barrels élevage. It is patrimoine at its finest, bridled by generations of well educated viticulturalists. And on that note, Louis is now finishing his enology schooling and work abroad with different wineries and returning to the Domaine to work alongside his Father, ensuring the legacy of this iconic estate.

"Quite simply, this is as close as you can get to a reference for classically styled Alsace wines."

— Jon Bonné, The New French Wine

"The small family domaine in France that works traditionally using techniques and savoir faire passed down across multiple generations is under serious threat today. Consolidation, technology, regulation, foreign investment, globalization, and many other factors (all in the name of progress), threaten the great agricultural tradition of winegrowing in France, arguably the world’s greatest winegrowing culture. Few domaines in France embody this way of life more ably and proudly than Domaine Albert Boxler in Niedermorschwihr."

— Kermit Lynch