(Manfred Klimek / Editorial team / animated photo: Weingut & Runwayml)
I no longer remember exactly, what year it was. Late nineties, perhaps very early noughties. All I know is that at the time I was pretty convinced that German red wine was, at best, a perhaps well-intentioned misunderstanding. Something one tried out of politeness, but did not drink out of desire. Too thin, too sour, made too much with the traditional wagging finger. France and Italy were givens. And Austria and Hungary too, a little Spain and Napa. But Germany and red wine? Definitely! Not!
And then this Merlot from Philipp Kuhn came along.
I remember the striking label, but not a vintage, nor even the exact place where I first drank it. What has remained is the memory of a feeling of disorientation. This wine did not fit my picture. It was dark, immensely fruity, calm, concentrated, without becoming broad. No textbook example, no commentary on anything. Simply a wine that stood there. And tasted very good. Too good!
I took a few bottles back to Vienna. On a whim, perhaps out of curiosity too, I put them in decanters on the table and poured them blind. No hint, no context. The reactions were astonishingly unanimous: Bordeaux, northern Italy, perhaps something Tuscan. No one – really no one – thought of Germany. When I revealed it, there was first disbelief, then laughter, then that brief silence that occurs when something has to be rearranged in one’s mind.
It was not a moment of revelation, more a crack in my own way of thinking. And as is often the case with such cracks: one does not immediately walk through them. I did not drink Kuhn again for a long time afterwards – almost two decades. Not out of idleness, more out of a strange form of contentment. I had understood that German red wine could do more than I had given it credit for – and moved on.
It was only many years later that I came back. Without expectation, without nostalgia. Perhaps even with a slight scepticism: what remains of such early impressions when one does not nurture them? The answer: remarkably much.
Philipp Kuhn’s wines today have less of the demonstrative seriousness that was so often associated with German red wine in the past. They no longer have anything to prove, either to themselves or to the winemaker. The Pinot Noir from Kirschgarten (2019), for example: not a Burgundy costume that tops everything, no name-dropping of great names. Cherry, yes, but cool, clear, not sweet. Depth without heaviness, tension without nervousness. A touch of rosehip, a small touch of plum, surprisingly much cassis and blueberry. No eucalyptus. A great German Pinot.
Or the Viognier (2022). A variety that – outside the Rhône – I avoided for a long time because it so often tips into the perfumed. Not here. No exotic showing off, no opulence. Rather fragrance, precision, an already astonishingly restrained elegance. You can tell that someone here knows how quickly Viognier can become too much – and consciously stops short of that point. Let us come to the two favourites from the new tasting:
Cabernet Franc Laumersheimer Reserve 2019
What surprises me about this Cabernet Franc from Philipp Kuhn is not its power, but the self-evidence with which a Bordeaux grape – and one that is hardly known as a single-variety wine, as well as being demanding – is grounded so strikingly in its spicy fruitiness. A delicious wine. Historically, Franc has carried a reputation for being difficult, sometimes excessively green, overly austere and intellectual – and this wine works precisely against that. It is dark, densely cool at its core, but never forbidding. Bay leaf, olive, forest floor, mushrooms, wet stone, pepper, along with a freshness that does not arise from a show of acidity, but from tension. The oak is there, but not as furniture, more as space. Suddenly there is a wine that can stand effortlessly alongside great Loire wines without ingratiating itself stylistically. Not a German Cabernet Franc curiosity, but an internationally serious red wine with provenance and inner calm.
Blaufränkisch Laumersheimer Reserve 2019
This Blaufränkisch is then the troublemaker in the best sense. A grape variety that one still mentally parks in Burgenland is placed here in the Palatinate without folkloric reassurance – and it works. Not elegant in the Burgundian sense, not overly charming, but darkly fruity, spicy, almost archaic. Tar ointment, black pepper, black cherry, dark chocolate, chalk, mineral salt and a touch of tomato. The wine is dense, yes, but not clumsy. It draws more inwards than outwards, demanding attention, time and air. That something like this comes from Laumersheim is initially disconcerting – and that is precisely where its quality lies. Not a stylistic quotation, not regional fancy dress, but a Blaufränkisch that shows how openly Kuhn thinks, and has done for decades.
In retrospect, that Merlot was less a single great wine than a great door-opener. It showed me that my certainties were fragile – and that this is precisely where the appeal lies. Today, decades later, Philipp Kuhn is no longer a moment of surprise for me, but a constant. And forever the winemaker who first made German red wine taste good to me.