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Domaine Brand & Fils 'Le Lièvre' Alsace Rouge
Grapes — 100% Pinot Noir
Region — Ergersheim, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France
Tasting Notes — Translucent ruby, bright and unfiltered. Crunchy red cherry, cranberry, and wild strawberry on the nose, with rose petal, dried herbs, and a faintly wild, foresty edge underneath. The palate is light-bodied and vivid, with fine tannin, high-toned acidity, and the kind of energy that only comes out of a wine made with genuinely nothing in it. Alsatian Pinot Noir at its most transparent and least polished, in the best possible sense. Serve it cool.
The Wine — Pinot Noir from Philippe Brand's vineyards around Ergersheim, a village twenty kilometers west of Strasbourg sitting on the first slopes of the Vosges. Alsace has grown Pinot Noir for centuries but spent most of the modern era treating it as an afterthought behind its aromatic whites. Producers like Philippe are the reason that is changing.
The wine is made to the SAINS standard, an acronym for Sans Aucun Intrant Ni Sulfite ajouté: without any input or added sulfite. Membership requires exactly what it says. Nothing goes in the wine at any stage, including at bottling. Grapes, native yeast, time, and nothing else.
Le Lièvre means the hare.
Farming — Certified organic since 2000, with biodynamic practices begun by Philippe's father Charles in the 1990s, well ahead of almost anyone else in the Bas-Rhin. The family farm at Ergersheim has belonged to the Brands since 1750 and remained a genuine polyculture operation, growing wheat, tobacco, and raising farm animals, until the second half of the twentieth century. Philippe's grandfather Lucien began concentrating on vines in the early 1950s, growing the holding from just over half a hectare to what is now around ten.
Winemaking — Indigenous yeast fermentation. No additives of any kind, no fining, no filtration, and no added sulfites at any point, in keeping with the SAINS charter. This is zero-zero winemaking in its most literal form.
The Producer — Philippe Brand is the third generation at Ergersheim. He worked harvests in Burgundy, the Peloponnese, and the Barossa before taking over the family estate fully in 2008, and from roughly 2010 onward he began moving the range cuvée by cuvée toward completely natural winemaking, eventually joining SAINS.
Asked once why he stopped intervening, his answer was direct: once you understand how the pieces fit together, the taste, the terroir, and the respect owed to the fruit, there is simply no reason left to add anything. Charles had already done the hard part in the vineyard in the 1990s; Philippe carried that logic through to its conclusion in the cellar.
Production is tiny and the wines are sought after in Paris wine bars and cavistes, which is the usual sign that a producer is doing something right and not making enough of it.
Drink It With — Roast chicken, charcuterie, mushroom dishes, choucroute, munster cheese, or duck with cherries.
Domaine Brand & Fils 'Le Lièvre' Alsace Rouge
Grapes — 100% Pinot Noir
Region — Ergersheim, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France
Tasting Notes — Translucent ruby, bright and unfiltered. Crunchy red cherry, cranberry, and wild strawberry on the nose, with rose petal, dried herbs, and a faintly wild, foresty edge underneath. The palate is light-bodied and vivid, with fine tannin, high-toned acidity, and the kind of energy that only comes out of a wine made with genuinely nothing in it. Alsatian Pinot Noir at its most transparent and least polished, in the best possible sense. Serve it cool.
The Wine — Pinot Noir from Philippe Brand's vineyards around Ergersheim, a village twenty kilometers west of Strasbourg sitting on the first slopes of the Vosges. Alsace has grown Pinot Noir for centuries but spent most of the modern era treating it as an afterthought behind its aromatic whites. Producers like Philippe are the reason that is changing.
The wine is made to the SAINS standard, an acronym for Sans Aucun Intrant Ni Sulfite ajouté: without any input or added sulfite. Membership requires exactly what it says. Nothing goes in the wine at any stage, including at bottling. Grapes, native yeast, time, and nothing else.
Le Lièvre means the hare.
Farming — Certified organic since 2000, with biodynamic practices begun by Philippe's father Charles in the 1990s, well ahead of almost anyone else in the Bas-Rhin. The family farm at Ergersheim has belonged to the Brands since 1750 and remained a genuine polyculture operation, growing wheat, tobacco, and raising farm animals, until the second half of the twentieth century. Philippe's grandfather Lucien began concentrating on vines in the early 1950s, growing the holding from just over half a hectare to what is now around ten.
Winemaking — Indigenous yeast fermentation. No additives of any kind, no fining, no filtration, and no added sulfites at any point, in keeping with the SAINS charter. This is zero-zero winemaking in its most literal form.
The Producer — Philippe Brand is the third generation at Ergersheim. He worked harvests in Burgundy, the Peloponnese, and the Barossa before taking over the family estate fully in 2008, and from roughly 2010 onward he began moving the range cuvée by cuvée toward completely natural winemaking, eventually joining SAINS.
Asked once why he stopped intervening, his answer was direct: once you understand how the pieces fit together, the taste, the terroir, and the respect owed to the fruit, there is simply no reason left to add anything. Charles had already done the hard part in the vineyard in the 1990s; Philippe carried that logic through to its conclusion in the cellar.
Production is tiny and the wines are sought after in Paris wine bars and cavistes, which is the usual sign that a producer is doing something right and not making enough of it.
Drink It With — Roast chicken, charcuterie, mushroom dishes, choucroute, munster cheese, or duck with cherries.