Alsace wine growers looking for a cheesy boost

Paris (Reuters Life!) - The wine growers of the Alsace region in northeast France, close to the Rhine river on the border with Germany, are trying to boost sales by promoting the combination of their mostly white wines with cheese.

Yvelise Sciard of the Alsace wine growers association has teamed up with Cyrille Lorho, the best French cheese specialist of 2007 who has a shop in Strasbourg, for a wine and cheese tasting in central Paris.

"Usually when the cheeses arrive on the table at the end of the dinner, another bottle of red wine is opened," Sciard said.

Of the some 1.2 million hectoliters of Alsace wines -- more than 160 million bottles -- 91 percent are white. "But in fact 80 percent of cheeses marry very well with whites," Sciard added.

There was Riesling with goat's cheese and ginger vinegar, a red Pinot Noir with warm Roves des Garrigues goat's cheese enhanced with tomato, bell pepper and lavender.

A smooth Saint Point cow's milk cheese with black truffle and grilled hazelnut oil was accompanied by an aromatic Pinot Gris while a sweet Gewurtztraminer worked wonders with a Roquefort blue sheep's cheese served with white chocolate and a fig compote.

Most of the Alsace wines are sold in France and Sciard and her association are trying to get more French restaurants to put their wines on the cards as well as convince sommeliers to suggest their wines to go alongside dishes other than for more than just the traditional sauerkraut with Riesling.

A sparkling Cremant cleaned the palate after a desert of sticky Munster cheese with mango sorbet and white meringue.

Only 25 percent of Alsace wines get exported. In 2007, Alsace sales were up 0.8 percent in volume and three percent in value to some 500 million euros ($776.5 million).

"Our biggest foreign market is strangely enough not our neighbor Germany," Sciard said.

It is Belgium, followed by the Netherlands and Denmark.

"That third place of Denmark may surprise, but it is due to wine tourism. Many Danish people who come to France for their holidays make their first stop in the Alsace and drink some wines. On the way back they stop again to buy more," she said.

There are 119 wine growing communities with 15,450 hectares of vineyards in production that make up 19 percent of total French production of still white AOC wines. That means not including sparkling wines such as champagne.

Pinot Blanc, Riesling and Pinot Gris are the top three grape varieties but there is also Sylvaner, Gewurtztraminer, Pinot Noir and Chasselas.

These grapes are also often used in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and underscore the Germanic influence in Alsace.

France and Germany have fought many battles over the area of Alsace and Lorraine, the last ending some 60 years ago.

Pinot noir is the star grape used for the red Burgundy wines to the south.

Sciard said that in the Alsace a relatively high proportion of wines - up to a fifth -- was sold by the growers themselves to people coming to their cellars and hospitality to tourists from France and abroad was very important to the sector.