(Manfred Klimek / Pic animated: Runwayml)
My winter journey through winemakers’ estates continues, intended to explain winegrowers and their global and broad outlook – at a time when everyone working in wine has to equip themselves with an enormous amount of know-how in order to respond to a market undergoing total change. Today: the sound of two winemaking couples. First stop: Rheinhessen. The Roter Hang is historically a white-wine monument. Riesling, red slate, acidity. Red wine does not feature in the classic narratives here – or at most as a footnote. And that is precisely why it is worth looking at the estate of Lisa Bunn and Bastian Strebel. The two began running the family estate in 2011 – not out of romantic impulse, but out of necessity: conversion to organic farming, hand harvesting, large-format wood, spontaneous fermentation. No radical gesture of the kind many cultivated in those years, but rather a careful switch to maximum seriousness.
The Nierstein Spätburgunder vom Rotliegenden 2022 (€ 20.00) shows exactly that: no residual-sweet Pinot kitsch, no Burgundy tracing, but a slender, precise wine with mineral tension, fine fruit and controlled oak: a hint of morello cherry, surprisingly plenty of cassis, a hint of rosehip, hardly any eucalyptus, a hint of soil salts (never over the top) and a little dark chocolate. A model wine for braised dishes and game.
The Pinot Noir 2022 (€ 11.90), the entry-level wine, is remarkably unspectacular – in the best sense. Clean, accessible, with no awkward corners requiring explanation: tasty, and gone. The Spätburgunder Reserve 2022 (€ 26.00) goes further, of course: more depth, longer maturation, perceptible composure. No show of muscle, but concentration. And a wine to lay down for a long time.
And then there is also the Frauengarten Spätburgunder “Wie alles begann” 2011 (price on request) on the table. Not a product of nostalgia, but a touchstone. In direct comparison with the 2022s, it becomes clear how strongly Bunn’s style has developed: less assertion of oak, more precision, more self-confidence. The wine holds – and, in retrospect, tells us why the current vintages seem so assured.
Next stop: the Wachau in Lower Austria. Twenty years ago, the decision by Elisabeth Pichler and Erich Krutzler, both children of prominent winegrowers, to found their own estate in Oberloiben was still a bet on breaking out and attracting attention. As with Lisa and Bastian on the Roter Hang, it was not a gesture of rebellion, but an intensive avant-garde approach, experimentation and openness that made the difference: plenty of time in the vineyard, a very gentle touch in the cellar, spontaneous fermentations and the courage to place terroir far above fashions. I tasted only Grüner Veltliner.
Veltliner Supperin 2024 (€ 34.00) is a statement of this approach: it reflects the unique site on the Danube plateau, the salty spice and the density of the soil, without getting lost in fruit acrobatics – a wine that shows structure first and fruit afterwards. The Grüner Veltliner Rothenhof Alte Reben 2024 (€ 40.00) suggests what old vines can achieve: more depth, more tension, a touch of herbal complexity, carried by mineral freshness: a hint of pepper, a hint of turmeric, a hint of mugwort, plenty of stone fruit, a little quince and also a hint of chilled letscho. Both Veltliners show how consistently Pichler-Krutzler reads terroir and translates it into wine.
The Grüner Veltliner Kellerberg 2024 (€ 58.00) from the prime site above Dürnstein is a tightly woven, precise wine: it combines the rather gentle minerality of the Danube slopes with a quiet concentration that only opens up after a few minutes in the glass – the result of those long growing seasons and cool nights that characterise the Wachau.
And then there is the Grüner Veltliner Pfaffenberberg Alte Reben “late release” 2015 (€ 66.00): a wine that shows what patience can achieve. After pressing, the wine was reductive, mineral and almost purist. After years of bottle ageing, it now opens into a dense, creamy, mature texture – a demonstration wine of how splendidly Grüner Veltliner tolerates ageing without losing fruit and weight.