Katie Melchior

The view from the top of the hill at Clos Madeleine, a new vineyard project from Yann Chave. | Photo Credit: Katie Melchior Lush, verdant hillsides, a breeze perfumed with acacia flowers, and organic vineyards interspersed with vibrant plots of fruit trees: the messy, chaotic beauty of the landscapes in the Northern Rhône caught me by surprise.

At a time when tasting rooms are closing, experiences are becoming more and more rote, and the wine industry is losing drinkers hand over fist, there is reason to be pessimistic. The wine world has been largely the same for nearly a hundred years while everything around us changed dramatically. World wars were won and lost. Geopolitics shifted. New economies emerged. The television and the computer took the world by storm. The smartphone revolutionized education and entertainment.

“I’m trying to reform the Schlossberg,” says winemaker Eddy Faller of Domaine Weinbach, referring to the Grand Cru vineyard in Alsace. “Fewer grape varieties, all organic. For me, that would be the dream.” In addition to continuing his family’s legacy at Domaine Weinbach, Faller is the president of the Grand Cru Schlossberg Association, just outside of Colmar, in the Alsace region of eastern France.