[wine] Hugel: Go Gentil into that good night.

FYI. June 12, 2009 Jean Hugel, Alsace Winemaker, Dies at 84 By ERIC ASIMOV Jean Hugel, a leading force in resurrecting the Alsatian wine trade after the devastation of World War II and the longtime head of one of the best-known and oldest producers in Alsace, died Tuesday in Ribeauvillé, Alsace, France. He was 84. The cause was cancer, his nephew Étienne Hugel said. For people who began drinking wine in the 1970s and ’80s, discovering the wines of Alsace, in their slender, fluted bottles, was no small pleasure. Thanks to Mr. Hugel’s efforts to introduce his wines to the rest of the world, many of those bottles bore the name Hugel & Fils. The Hugel company had produced wine in the small village of Riquewihr since it was established in 1639. For centuries, Alsace, the frontier province in northeastern France just across the Rhine from Germany, had been passed back and forth between the French and the Germans, depending on who had won the last battle. When Jean Hugel was born, in 1924, Alsace had only recently become French again, with the end of World War I. By the time he came of age, during World War II, Alsace was again in German hands. While the history of winemaking in Alsace stretches back centuries, only after World War II, when the province was back in French control, did Alsace take its place as one of the leading French wine regions. Johnny Hugel, as Mr. Hugel was known in the wine trade, was a leading voice in promoting Alsatian wines and in pushing for the adoption of rules to govern wine production in Alsace. He played an especially important role in developing rules for producing the sweet wines known as vendange tardive, or late harvest, and sélection de grains nobles, made from grapes affected by botrytis, the fungus known as the noble rot. Minute quantities of late-harvested sweet wines had always been made in Alsace, but by the mid-20th century, quality levels were no longer enforced, and myriad mediocre wines were being sold under generic German terms like spätlese and auslese. Mr. Hugel drafted proposals for strict standards governing the production of these wines, along with French names for them. The proposals became law in 1984. Mr. Hugel was less successful as chairman of a commission charged with identifying the best vineyards in Alsace, which were to be designated grand crus. Influential growers outside the grand cru areas, not wanting to be left out, argued for their inclusion. Unable to match their political power, Mr. Hugel dropped out. When the grand cru system was established in the 1990s, some of the vineyard sites were more than twice as big as Mr. Hugel had judged to be deserving of the designation. Hugel, along with several other leading houses like Trimbach, refused to use the grand cru designation on their labels. Mr. Hugel is survived by his wife, Simone, and two daughters, Dominique and Judith. After leading the family business from 1948 to 1997, he ceded the reins to his nephews, Étienne, Jean Philippe and Marc, members of the 13th generation to run the company. -- ------------------------------ * Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, mobile : 651/645-0753 * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *