Domaine Ostertag

Stéphane, David, and I started our Alsace wine tasting tour at Domaine Ostertag on 12/09/2005. The hostess was quite friendly and knowledgable, and they produce nice everyday wine at a great price, IMHO.

Our favorite wineries during the trip are Domaine Marcel Deiss and Domaine Schoffit. To allow their terroir to shine through, these two domaines adopt completely different winemaking methods: While Marcel Deiss blends different grapes like the Southern Rhône, Schoffit uses single varietal for each bottle. Both domaines produce excellent wines and we could definitely taste different terroirs.

Alsace wine is at the top of my list, because it's so Asian food friendly (Gewurztraminer has lychee nose and loves spicy food) and their Grand Crus are such a bargain compared to Bourgogne and Bordeaux. Its only downside is that I can't pronounce (the impossible) German.

I drew this on a new sketchbook claiming that it could take wet media. I guess that it doesn't mean watercolor pencils, because the pencil marks didn't get resolved properly and I got a different (read: lousy) effect than expected. Next time, a proper watercolor sketchbook, not one of those multipurpose ones.

Media: pencil, watercolor pencils, colored pencils.