Alzinger | Wachau, Austria
Leo Alzinger Jr.
Jochen Beurer | Swabia
Jochen Beurer
When it comes to German Riesling, Jochen Beurer stands as a man apart. A one time European BMX champion running a small garagiste estate in Swabia, Jochen could hardly be farther removed from the landed traditions of his more Northern neighbors. Similarly, his dry, terroir-saturated wines from the historic, limestone dominated hills around Stetten have little in common with what most Americans think of as “German Riesling.” These are, first and foremost, Swabian wines, steeped in the traditions of a region that has long remained outside the national mainstream.
The vineyards are tended biodynamically, the objective is to yield wines that breathe life, “not cola.” Respect for nature and patience are reflected everywhere: in cool years, Jochen is inevitably the last to pick; successive tries are the norm; spontaneous fermentations follow their own course, usually including malolactic. Elevage is slow and careful and wines are committed to bottle when only the time is exactly right. Beurer’s wines are completely unforced yet strikingly intense, long, structured and saturated in minerality.
Dönnhoff | Nahe
Cornelius Dönnhoff
The Dönnhoff family came to the Nahe over 200 years ago. As with Emrich-Schönleber, the history here is of mixed agriculture. It was only with time that the estate began to concentrate more and more on wine, until that was the sole focus. Helmut Dönnhoff, one of the legends of German winemaking, took over the estate with the celebrated 1971 vintage. He has, in the years since, brought the estate to the pinnacle of German winemaking. Helmut’s son Cornelius has been working with his father for many years.
Weingut Dönnhoff is currently around 25 hectares, with key holdings in the Hermannshöhle, Brücke, Felsenberg and Dellchen. Indeed, one of the many assets of the estate is the diversity of terroir, from slate, sandstone, limestone (Hermannshöhle) to porphyry and loam (Brücke) to quartzite (Krötenpfuhl) and red sandstone (Höllenpfad). The estate’s style is grandiose, layer after layer of fruit that remains both pure and gossamer – a supernal elegance, perfect balance, a filigree that is simply ravishing. The estate is famous for both their Prädikat wines as well as their dry wines.
Eva Fricke | Rheingau
Eva Fricke
Eva Fricke does not come from the Rheingau, yet she may be part of the story of how the region saves itself. The Rheingau is perhaps the most famous winemaking region in Germany. However, over the last few decades the great names of centuries past seem to have lost something essential. There seems to be an unspoken philosophy of “good enough” and a complacency that has mired even some of the legends of this region.
Leave it to an upstart from Saxony, a strong-minded winemaker with a few hectares in Kiedrich and Lorch, to try and change this trajectory. After studying widely (in Australia, Bordeaux, the Piedmont, Spain) Eva returned to Germany to focus on the Rheingau. She worked with J.B. Becker and then with Johannes Leitz where she was the vineyard and operations manager. 2006 was the first vintage of her estate – microscopic quantities were produced. Still, she has quickly established a reputation in Germany and abroad with wines that have the textural breadth of Rheingau Rieslings, yet with uncommon rigor, focus, mineral.
Gunderloch | Rheinhessen
Johannes Hasselbach
Established in 1890, Gunderloch today is a thriving estate of approximately 25ha of vines in some of the top vineyards of the Roter Hang (red slope), on the banks of the Rhein river in Rheinhessen. The estate makes GGs and trocken wines from the grand cru sites Pettenthal and Hipping. In Nackenheim, they own the lion’s share of the grand cru Rothenberg from which their most famous GG comes, as well as resplendent Spatlesen and noble sweet wines. The Rieslings from Gunderloch, particularly those from the lurid red slate of the Rothenberg, are full, elegant wines full of yellow fruits, exotic spice, great structure and fine acidity for long aging.
Now, over 125 years after its founding, the story here is evolving. What used to be a reductive cellar is now seeing more barrels, more spontaneous fermentations, less handling of the wines and less “winemaking” overall. The wines are getting drier, more focused, and less baroque. The changes happening here are cause for real excitement, and all of them are springing from the restless mind of Johannes Hasselbach, the master and commander of the estate since 2012. He is taking Gunderloch in a new direction and the wines are achieving levels of grace, balance, and vital energy they have never shown before. If you do not know the wines of Gunderloch or have not tasted them recently, get ready. This is a winery in the midst of a renaissance.
Julian Haart | Mosel
Julian and Nadine Haart
David Schildknecht, writing for Parker’s Wine Advocate, introduced Julian Haart to the U.S. with the following sentence: “Not many wine careers can have started off on a more superlative level than Haart’s, yet from my several conversations with him I am convinced that his perfectionism goes hand in hand with rigorous self-criticism that should preclude success going to his head.”
Julian and Nadine farm a little more than four hectares in the middle Mosel, focusing on sites around Piesport (Goldtröpfchen) and Wintrich (Ohligsberg). This is, roughly, about as big as they want to get. Part of the joy of winemaking for these two, is doing everything themselves. This is vineyard work, and winemaking, at the most human scale. Nearly everything must be done by hand – most of the vineyards are steep as hell and most of them are terraced. Even walking through them is a bit hazardous. At Haart, they produce both dry “terroir wines” and classic “Prädikat” wines. For all the wines, the focus is purity and finesse.
Jurtschitsch | Kamptal
Alwin Jurtschitsch
Alwin Jurtschitsch and his wife Stefanie Hasselbach are both scions of great wine families: Alwin represents the current generation at Jurtschitsch and Stefanie’s family owns the famed Gunderloch estate in Rheinhessen (now under the command of her brother Johannes). Over a decade of working at Jurtschitsch together, Alwin and Stef have become leaders in the natural wine movement in the Kamptal. Jurtschitsch is the oldest winery in the area, dating back to the 16th century; it was purchased by Alwin’s family in 1868. Their vineyard holdings are formidable, including the erste lagen Loiserberg, Kaferberg and the famous Zöbinger Heiligenstein, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the greatest vineyards in Austria.
When the young couple started working at the winery in 2006, they converted all the vineyards to organic viticulture. They also reduced the size of the estate from 80ha to 60ha so that they could focus on quality rather than quantity. The Rieslings and Gruner Veltliners now made at Jurtschitsch are laser-focused and characterized by mineral precision, delicacy, and finesse. The outstanding quality of the wines coupled with the estate’s dedication to natural winemaking and constant exploration of their terroir and cellar practices is pushing the envelope of what modern Austrian wine can be.
Hirtzberger | Wachau
Franz Hirtzberger
Keller | Rehinhessen
Klaus Peter & Julia Keller
Egon Müller | Saar
Egon Müller IV
This is perhaps the most vaunted estate in Germany – as the wine writer John Gilman has put it, this is “the DRC of Germany.” The estate focuses on a single vineyard, the Scharzhofberg. Likely cultivated since Roman times, the vineyard was managed by monks until it was secularized by Napoleon in the late 18th century. The history of the estate as we know it today begins in the late 19th century with Egon Müller the first – it was he who cemented the reputation of greatness at exhibits such as the 1900 Exhibition Universelle et Internationale in Paris. Egon Müller the second ran the estate for only a few years, dying in a tractor accident in the vineyard in 1941. Egon Müller the third returned from England as a prisoner of war in 1945 – this was his first harvest and he managed to bring in only 1,200 liters from 7.4 hectares. Egon Müller the third died in 1991, though his son Egon Müller the fourth had been working at the estate since 1985 and has since continued the legacy of greatness. The focus at the estate is Prädikat wines – Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese and (gulp) BAs and TBAs. These are widely considered to be among the greatest white wines in the world, with a combination of intensity, fine-ness and elegance that is simply incomparable.
Nikolaihof | Wachau
Familie Saahs
Nikolaihof is one of the oldest wine estates in Austria, whose history goes back almost 2000 years to the Roman empire. In 1894 the Saahs family took over the estate and carried on the traditions the monastic culture had established after the romans, including integrated farming. Even as winemaking and grape growing took a larger role at Nikolaihof in the 1960s, chemicals were never used in farming. Essentially this estate has always been organic. Nikolaihof has been practicing Bio-dynamics since 1971, making them one of the longest Bio-dynamic practicing wineries in the world.
Nikolaihof still functions as an independent, bio-diverse farm, growing all kinds of herbs, fruits and flowers, tending beehives for honey, and even using seeds for grapeseed oil. The average age of the vines at the estate are 47 years old and the vineyards are farmed without herbicides, pesticides, artificial fertilizers or synthetic sprays. Instead, stinging nettles, manure, valerian root and other specially produced preparations are used. Natural fermentations are the rule, in Austrian oak vessels, deep in the cold, 700-year-old cellar. Long lees contact and aging are the norm, with some wines aging as long as 15 years before being bottled.
Selbach-Oster | Mosel
Barbara and Johannes Selbach
One of Germany’s most erudite young winemakers, Gernot Kollmann has followed impressive turns at Van Volxem and Knebel with his current position, stewarding the once-dormant Immich-Batterieberg to the forefront of Mosel wine. Located in Enkirch, on the lower part of the Mittelmosel, its name and Jugendstil label refer to the Batterieberg or “demolition hill,” a steep cliff face of solid slate blasted to rubble by Carl August Immich in the mid-1800s to make it cultivable. The estate’s vineyards are located in Enkirch and the lineup (Batterieberg, Ellergrub, Steffensberg and Zweppwingert) recalls a previous legendary era in German wine, when all four were among the highest-ranked sites in the Clotten’s 1897 viticultural tax map for the Prussian government. Grapes are hand-picked at extremely low yields and vinified close to dry in a combination of used barriques and stainless steel, utilizing exclusively ambient yeasts and minimal amounts of sulfur. Many of Kollmann’s techniques would be familiar to Immich’s 19th-century forebears, yet he is moving the estate squarely forward while staying rooted in tradition. The wines are compellingly vibrant and quintessentially terroir-driven.
Spreitzer | Rheingau
Bernd and Andreas Spreitzer
Andreas and Bernd Spreitzer have worked relentlessly to revitalize this historic estate, one of the oldest in the Rheingau dating back to 1641. The brothers have furthered their predecessors approach to farming as naturally as possible by implementing a novel system of rotating cover crops, and favoring horse drawn plows over tractors. Converting the winery to solar power has been the latest of their modifications to the estate. It is this kind of forward-thinking ambition that has put Spreitzer back on the map as one of the most compelling estates in the Rheingau today.
The heart of the Spreitzer estate lies within the classified Lenchen vineyard which includes the single parcels of Rosengarten, actually a walled in clos, and Eisenberg. These rich parcels sit close the Rhein river and produce lush, opulent wines such as “303”, named after the record breaking ripeness of 303 degrees oechsle that was achieved in 1920. Doosenberg, richer in quartzite and sitting at 600 meters elevation offers a beautiful counterbalance to these wines with its firm, mineral core, and penetrating structure.
Von Winning | Pfalz
Andreas Hütwohl
Von Winning maintains some of the oldest parcels in the Grand Cru sites of Forst, Deidesheim and Ruppertsberg. Andreas Huetwöhl and Stefan Attman work in tandem to craft the wines of the estate – every decision is informed by passion for the Pfalz terroir and experiences at estates in the Côte d’Or and abroad. For example, the estate’s newer vines are planted at a very high vine density – 9,500 vines per hectare, as opposed to the more typical less than 5,000. This creates competition amongst the vines, forcing the roots to grow deep, and naturally reducing yields. The vineyards are planted to a single-cane trellising system, prevalent in Burgundy, and Grosses Gewächs wines ferment in 500-liter French barrels.
Von Winning practices organic and sustainable viticulture. The estate’s premium wines are treated with a minimalist approach and with the highest respect in the cellar. Gentle clarification, a natural and spontaneous fermentation and the abandonment of fining agents create wines with a distinctive indigenous and very elegant style. Pumping the juice or wine is never necessary in the gravity-flow winery, allowing for minimal, and gentle vinification.