Domaine Marc Tempe

A native to Alsace, Marc Tempe spent 11 years with the Institut National des Appellations d’Origine, overseeing viticultural and enological aspects of Alsace harvests. His responsibilities included recommending lieux-dits (place names; i.e. single vineyards) for inclusion into the ranks of grand cru, and he became initially acquainted with many of what are now grand cru vineyards. Befriended by Leonard Humbrecht, Tempe quickly understood Domaine Zind-Humbrecht methods: small yields, attention to the vines, harvesting in small bins, gentle pressing of whole berries, long fermentation with wild yeasts, working with the lees, and all with an ecologist’s point of view. He especially learned to distrust residual sugar in wines as a component that masks faults. Except for his late harvest wines, his wines are typically dry.

With his wife, Anne Marie, Tempe put his extensive knowledge if what constituted great vineyards to another use: in the early 1990s, they began buying small parcels. They weaned these parcels off chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and synthetic fungicides, converting them to biodynamic vineyards.