Domaine Bléger: Organic Alsace Wines - Orschwiller, Alsace Wine Route

History and origins of the estate

The Bléger family traces its roots to Switzerland. They arrived in Alsace in the 17th century and established themselves at the foot of Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg, a site long recognised for the exceptional richness of its soils. Over the generations, the family farmed and prospered, gradually acquiring land on the Haut-Koenigsbourg hillsides to develop a wine-growing activity that would eventually take precedence over all others.

Winegrowers from father to son and daughter since 1630, Claude and Christophe Bléger today lead an estate that embodies three and a half centuries of unbroken family presence on the same Alsatian terroir. A rootedness that is rare, and that is felt in every bottle.

The terroir and its unique character

Domaine Bléger is located at the heart of the Alsace Wine Route, in the village of Orschwiller (Bas-Rhin, 67600), at the foot of the prestigious Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg. This geographical position is no coincidence: the Haut-Koenigsbourg hillsides have long been recognised for the richness and diversity of their soils, offering the vines particularly favourable conditions for aromatic expression.

The vineyard extends over 9 hectares, spread across 4 villages and around thirty different plots. This fragmentation is not a constraint, it is precisely what allows the estate to work across a broad variety of soil types and to produce around twenty distinct cuvées per year, each revealing a specific expression of the Alsatian terroir.

Working the vines and our commitments

At Domaine Bléger, organic farming is not a recent approach, nor a response to market trends. It is a heritage, a way of working passed from generation to generation, long before organic certifications existed. Plant selection is rigorous. Planting density is high and pruning short: each vine produces little, but that little is of exceptional quality.

The soil is worked mechanically, five to seven passes per year, to aerate it, stimulate microbial life and encourage deep rooting. No synthetic herbicides, no synthetic pesticides. When disease pressure is high, the estate treats only with natural and organic products. Three full-time employees carry out the manual work that cannot be mechanised, alongside hydraulic intercep tools that facilitate vineyard operations.

Vinification begins in the vineyard: harvests are manual, carried out at full maturity. Each bunch is sorted at picking to avoid bruising and the oxidation of aromatics. In the winery, low-pressure pneumatic pressing extracts the maximum of aromas and complexity. The juices are statically settled, then transferred to large oak casks (foudres). Fermentation takes place with indigenous yeasts, the only ones capable of producing a wine that is truly unique and far from any standardised style. The wines are then aged on fine lees for eight to ten months, filtered, bottled, and stored in the estate's ageing cellar before release.

Grape varieties and appellations

The Bléger range covers the full palette of the seven official Alsace grape varieties, an aromatic breadth that few 9-hectare estates can claim with such depth. Each variety is planted on the plots whose soil type best matches its natural expression.

The wine style

The white wines, reds, rosés and sparkling wines of Domaine Bléger are authentic, alive and true, that is their promise, and it holds. They express the finesse of their terroirs with sincerity: pure, balanced, marked by the character of the grape variety and the minerality of the granite and gneiss soils of the Haut-Koenigsbourg. Fermentation with indigenous yeasts guarantees aromatic profiles that are unique and irreducible to any standardised style.

The dry white wines, from Sylvaner to Gewurztraminer via Riesling and Pinot Gris, are terroir-driven wines crafted without artifice. The Crémants d'Alsace, made using the traditional method, span a range from a sharp Brut to a mineral Extra-Brut. The Pinot Noir aged in oak casks is a wine built for the cellar, proof that Alsatian red wine deserves to be taken seriously. And the Late Harvest wines of Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris complete the picture with their luscious sweetness and remarkable balance.

What you will only find at Domaine Bléger

Organic since 1630, without a single interruption. In the 1960s, when chemical products swept through Alsatian vineyards, Domaine Bléger did not move. They are among the very rare Alsatian houses able to prove they have always farmed biologically, not as a marketing statement, but as a documented reality passed across fourteen generations.

The AOC Alsace Grand Cru Praelatenberg, on gneiss, at the foot of Haut-Koenigsbourg. This singular terroir, overlooked by the battlements of the medieval castle, yields Rieslings and Gewurztraminers of a crystalline minerality that is rare in Alsace. A wine that needs two to three years to open up, and can reward ten years of patience.

Around twenty cuvées across just 9 hectares. This level of diversity on such a carefully managed surface is the direct result of the patchwork of thirty plots spread across four villages: each parcel, each soil type, each variety finds its best expression. From entry-level Sylvaner to luscious Late Harvest wines, no other domaine of this size offers a panorama of Alsace as complete.

Indigenous yeasts, always. No commercial yeasts at Domaine Bléger. Fermentation relies solely on the yeasts naturally present on the organic grapes. This technically demanding choice, slower, less predictable, is the one that guarantees wines with a unique aromatic profile, faithful to the vintage and the terroir, and impossible to reproduce identically from one year to the next.

Frequently asked questions about Domaine Bléger