Wine · Terminology

Vendanges Tardives

Alsace's regulated late-harvest category — very ripe grapes, and not always a sweet wine.

Vendanges Tardives — VT — is Alsace's legally defined late harvest category. Grapes are picked well after normal ripeness, must reach a stated minimum sugar level, and may only come from the four cépages nobles: Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris and Muscat.

The important catch: VT regulates ripeness at harvest, not sweetness in the bottle. Some producers ferment the wine nearly dry, giving a powerful, high- alcohol wine; others stop early, giving something clearly sweet. The label rarely says which.

In practice

  • Minimum must weights around 235 g/L of sugar for Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris, 220 g/L for Riesling and Muscat.
  • Chaptalisation is forbidden; hand harvest is required; each lot is tasted and approved.
  • Botrytis may be present but is not required — unlike Sélection de Grains Nobles.
  • Wines cannot be released until 18 months after the harvest.

Where you'll meet it

  • Alsace, on the region's more serious labels.
  • As the direct French counterpart to German Spätlese and Auslese — the same concept, different thresholds.

Reading a VT bottle

Because sweetness is not fixed by the category, you have to infer it:

Clue Suggests
Alcohol 13.5–15% Fermented dry or near-dry; powerful and rich
Alcohol 11–12.5% Fermentation stopped; noticeable residual sugar
Producer's back label Many now state a sweetness scale, 1–5
Grape Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris read sweeter at any given sugar level

This is the single most useful trick with Alsace: the stated alcohol tells you roughly where the sugar went.

VT in the ladder

Dry Alsace → Vendanges Tardives → Sélection de Grains Nobles

Each step requires more ripeness, more selection and more risk. VT is made in most decent vintages; SGN only when noble rot cooperates.

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