Gewurztraminer Grape: Origins, Regions and Styles

Gewurztraminer is a pink to red skinned grape that makes white wine, a mutation of Savagnin blanc that took its name from Tramin in South Tyrol, and in Alsace it is "the second most planted grape variety and the one most characteristic of the region". We call it "an aromatic wine grape variety, used in white wines, and which performs best in cooler climates". The variety carries high natural sugar, the wines are usually off-dry, and the signature is "a flamboyant bouquet of lychees". That lychee note is chemistry rather than poetry: the same entry reports that "Gewürztraminer and lychees share the same aroma compounds", citing work by Peter Ong and Terry Acree in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Alsace styles run from the very dry Trimbach house style to the very sweet, and the sugar makes the grape a staple of vendange tardive and of noble rot Sélection de Grains Nobles. Germany has about 10 square kilometres of it. New Zealand grows around 200 hectares.

Where does Gewurztraminer come from?

Tramin, a village in South Tyrol, the mainly German-speaking province of northern Italy. Traminer is recorded there from around the year 1000 until the 16th century, and that ancient Traminer was green-skinned. The ampelographer Pierre Galet thought Traminer was identical to Savagnin blanc, the green-skinned variety that makes vin jaune in the Jura. At some point Traminer or Savagnin blanc mutated into a pink-berried form, Red Traminer or Savagnin rose, and Galet believed a musqué or muscat-like mutation in that pink form produced the extra-aromatic Gewurztraminer. In Germany the names are all treated as synonymous. The pink skin is why the grape is still a white wine grape rather than one of the blue to black-skinned varieties that make red.

The name is younger than the vine. Gewürztraminer means 'spice Traminer' or 'perfumed Traminer', it is attested in Germany from the 16th century, and the variety reached Alsace down the Rhine by way of the Palatinate, where Gewürz was added to the name. The longer name was first used in Alsace in the 1870s. In 1973 the name Traminer was discontinued in Alsace except around Heiligenstein. The guidance is blunt about the tangle behind all this: "The history of the Traminer family is complicated, and not helped by its rather unstable genome."

The two references do not even agree on nationality. The variety entry gives the origin as Tramin, Italy. We file the row as "Gewürztraminer / Tramini / Traminac", names Savagnin blanc as the pedigree, gives France as the country of origin, and leaves the hectares and year of introduction columns empty.

Where is Gewurztraminer grown?

Alsace is the centre of gravity. It is the second most planted variety there, it grows better in the south of the region, and under French regulations as of 2011 it could be planted only in Moselle, Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin. Germany has about 10 square kilometres, and much of that crop is probably Red Traminer rather than true Gewurztraminer: German wine from the name can be much less aromatic than Alsace's, and some of those vines may well be misidentified Savagnin Rose. In Italy the Traminer is native to the cool Alpine slopes of Trentino-Alto Adige and the Südtirol, and whether the Gewürz mutant started there is an open question. Luxembourg has been prominent with the grape as well.

Elsewhere in Europe it grows in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey. In the New World it is planted in Monterey, Mendocino and Sonoma in California, the Columbia Valley of Washington and Oregon, the Snake River Region of Idaho, and the Finger Lakes and Long Island regions of New York, plus a long tail of states from Michigan to Hawaii. Canadian plantings sit on Vancouver Island and in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, the Niagara Peninsula, the north shore of Lake Erie and Prince Edward County. Australia's examples come from its coldest corners: the Adelaide Hills, Eden Valley, Tasmania, Clare Valley, Yarra Valley, the Great Southern region of Western Australia, the Canberra Region and the Macedon Ranges north of Melbourne, where the climate is cold and the soils volcanic. Argentina grows it in Mendoza, Chapadmalal and as far south as Trevelin in Patagonia. Chile and the Golan Heights round it out.

Hard planting numbers are scarce. New Zealand is the exception, where volumes stay tiny even as the grape gets more popular:

New Zealand region	Hectares
Marlborough	70
Hawke's Bay	54
Gisborne	19
North Canterbury	18
Central Otago	10
National total	around 200

What styles does Gewurztraminer make?

Everything from bone dry to intensely sweet, and Alsace covers the whole span on its own: styles there "range from the very dry Trimbach house style to the very sweet". The variety's high natural sugar makes it popular for dessert wine, both vendange tardive and the noble rot affected Sélection de Grains Nobles, and Alsace vendange tardive is what we list as the grape's notable wine. Noble rot is the same agent behind Sauternes, where, as we set out, sweet white wine is made from Sémillon, Sauvignon blanc and Muscadelle grapes affected by it.

Germany pulls in the opposite direction, going for "a relatively dry style, that tries to subdue the natural flamboyance of the grape". Alsace itself holds one exception worth knowing before you bid: the Klevener de Heiligenstein found around Heiligenstein is a Red Traminer, a Savagnin Rose, not a true Gewürz, and those wines are more restrained than other Gewurztraminers of Alsace. Across the Rhine, the Baden vineyard of Durbach claims its own Red Traminer, the Durbacher Clevner, which by local telling descends from vines that Karl Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden, brought from Chiavenna in Italy in 1780.

How does Gewurztraminer behave in the vineyard?

Awkwardly, and it punishes the wrong site. It is "especially sensitive to both soil and climate" and "very susceptible to disease - particularly viral infections and rot in damp climates". Heat is the other trap, because the sugar outruns the acid: "in hot climates it does not have enough acidity to balance the huge amounts of sugar, and picking early to retain the acidity means that the varietal aromas do not develop".

Soil does measurable work here, which is why the research on this grape reads as a study of terroir rather than of technique. Carlo Ferretti, writing in CATENA in 2019 on vineyards in the Dolomites of northern Italy, found that fine silicious soils increase both the spicy character and the ageing ability, while coarse dolomitic soils make a floral and light Gewurztraminer. Canopy work moves aroma without moving acid: Andrew Reynolds and Douglas Wardle, in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture in 1989, found that shoot trimming and cluster thinning can raise terpene concentrations with no major impact on pH or titratable acidity. Drought cuts total yield through smaller clusters and berries and drags titratable acidity down with it, and because the sugar is so high to begin with, water stress does not shift the °Brix.

What does Gewurztraminer taste like, and does it age?

Loud, and usually off-dry. Beyond the lychee, dry examples "may also have aromas of roses, passion fruit and floral notes", and it is not uncommon to notice some spritz, the fine bubbles that cling to the inside of the glass. Argentine versions are described as aromatic and mouth-filling with good acidity, showing intense aromas of lychees, white flowers and spices.

On ageing, the published evidence is narrow and it points at the site rather than the vintage: silicious soils raise the ageing ability, coarse dolomitic soils give the lighter, floral wine, and the bottles built to keep are the sweet ones, vendange tardive and Sélection de Grains Nobles. Neither the variety entry nor we list puts a drinking window on a bottle, so that judgement stays with you, wine by wine and vintage by vintage. Our drink-window data for your cellar is where we publish ours, and the live fine wine market index tracks what the wider market is doing while you wait.

What food goes with Gewurztraminer?

Spice, and plenty of it. We call these wines "ideal accompaniments for Asian cuisine" and names "spicy dishes, white fresh cheeses, or dishes with bittersweet flavors", singling out Thai and Indian cooking. That section carries no citations of its own, so treat it as a starting point rather than settled law. The logic sits in the grape itself: high natural sugar, and a bouquet flamboyant enough that German growers pick a dry style specifically to subdue it.

Which names on a label mean Gewurztraminer?

More than a hundred, and a few of them are not this grape at all. Croatian bottles carry Traminac, the grape list heads the row "Gewürztraminer / Tramini / Traminac", and the synonym list runs through Termeno Aromatico, Traminer Aromatico, Traminer Epice, Traminec, Savagnin Rose Aromatique, Gentil Rose Aromatique and Gertie, with Tramín červený marked as Czech and Slovak and Traminac mirisavi as Croatian. Two warnings come attached. "Confusingly, both pink and green grapes may be called simply Traminer", and "Genetic instability means that the Traminers should be regarded as a family of related clones, rather than distinct varieties", so DNA work will probably show that some of those names are not synonyms at all.

The crosses are a separate trap, because breeders have spent a century trying to get the aroma without the vineyard problems. Georg Scheu crossed Gewurztraminer with Müller-Thurgau in 1932 to make Würzer; similar work at Alzey and Würzburg gave Septimer and Perle. Siegerrebe, from a cross with Madeleine Angevine at Alzey, produced the highest must weight ever recorded in Germany at 326 °Oechsle. Harold Olmo crossed Sémillon and Gewurztraminer at U.C. Davis in 1938 to make Flora. Traminette came from a 1965 cross with Joannes Seyve 23.416 at the University of Illinois and is more cold-tolerant than its parent while keeping most of the taste and aroma. Others include Taminga in Australia, Manzoni rosa from trials with Trebbiano between 1924 and 1930, Pálava from Josef Veverka in 1970s Czechoslovakia, and the Hungarian Cserszegi fűszeres. None of them is Gewurztraminer, and a label naming one is telling you so.

If you hold Alsace Gewurztraminer, the open question is timing rather than identity: the very dry Trimbach style and a sweet Sélection de Grains Nobles are the same grape running on two different clocks. Our drink-window data for your cellar is built to tell you which bottle is ready.