class=”sc-29f61514-0 kHgAwW”>
winery dr heger
Happiness is often closer than you think. Just an hour’s drive from Basel, German winery Dr. Heger at the heart of Kaiserstuhl premium wines, which are among the best in the country. Average temperatures in Kaiserstuhl are among the highest in Germany, so the grapes here are spoiled by the sun and often ripen effortlessly.
Since 1935 this has been the country doctor Dr. Max Heger († 1972) founded a winery for quality-oriented viticulture. As a country doctor, Heger took wine from many patients to make it work well before he later decided to replace his doctor’s apron with winemaker’s boots and set up his own winery. Today, his granddaughter Joachim (65), wife Silvia (64) and two daughters Katharina (33) and Rebecca (28) run the family business.
With an area of approximately 35 hectares, the vineyards extend to the regions of Achkarrer Schlossberg and Ihringer Winklerberg. Both regions consist of weathered volcanic soils with loess or loess loam and offer the best conditions for growing the best wines. Particularly exciting is the small plot of Häusleboden, where Pinot Noir seedlings are planted from Clos Vougeot in Burgundy.
The 2019 Ihringen Vorderer Winklerberg Spätburgunder Grosses Gewächs (GG) shows off a seductive nose of rose flowers, blackberry, wild strawberry, black currant and a restrained wood aroma. On the palate, this magnificent Pinot Noir convinces with its silky tannins, refreshing acidity, abundant enamel and strong finish. Ihringer Winklerberg Häusleboden GG from the same crop, awarded a score of 98/100 by the wine critic Stuart Pigott (62), is also on a very high level.
Salwey Winery
Less than a 15-minute drive from the winery, Dr. Far from Heger, Konrad Salwey (49) is in the third generation creating great wines in their bottles. On a vineyard of about 23 hectares, Salwey is devoted to his grays, whites and of course his Pinot Noirs, which by the way have found a sizable fan base in Switzerland. No wonder, because Salwey’s wines, including Pinot Noir, cost only a fraction of the same quality wines, for example, from Burgundy.
Fresh and fruity, 2021 Kaiserstuhl Pinot Noir is made from fully rooted fruit that is ripened for one year in used oak barrels and partially fermented using carbonic acid maceration, a process quite unusual for the Baden wine region. While tasting the wine, Salwey confirms that Switzerland is now one of the most important export markets. The demand for wine from the USA and Scandinavian countries has also been increasing steadily in recent years.
After the excellent Ortswein Oberrotweil 2019, Salwey presents me one of their flagship wines, the 2019 Pinot Noir Kirchberg GG. For this intricate dream wine, he works with a dense plantation with up to 12,000 grapes sharing a single hectare of land. This leads to increased competition among the vines for foraging in the soil, resulting in fewer, more concentrated fruits. Accordingly, the harvest volume in 2019 was only 25 to 30 hectoliters per hectare.
Jean Stodden Winery
The family winery of Britta (45) and Alexander Stodden (49) is located further north in the Ahr viticulture region, Germany’s fourth smallest viticulture region. Pinot Noir plays the main role here and covers about four-fifths of all vineyards. Alexander Stodden explains that before the era of cheap flights, the Ahr region was a kind of Ballermann region, and visitors were less concerned with the taste and complexity of Ahr wine and primarily enjoyed the alcohol it contained.
Fortunately, those times are gone. Ahr has long established itself as an insider tip when it comes to premium Pinot Noir, whether sparkling or still wine. While deliberately reducing the amount of harvest, such as cutting buds or unripe fruit, was formerly considered a sin against the Lord, these interventions to improve the quality of wine are now regularly made.
An exciting element in Stodden’s glorification of Grosse Gewächse is shedding in its aging period. The wines are aged in separate wooden barrels and are combined into a single barrel every three months and returned to separate wooden barrels. This process not only serves to match the finished wine, but also means that in the end it no longer needs to be filtered.
When the entire Stoddens wine cellar was flooded during the summer 2021 flood, not even one barrel was in place as it used to be. Since the cellar notebook was also lost, it was no longer possible to keep track of which wine was in which barrel. All casks were then tested and divided into three quality levels. Pinot Noir Alexander the Great Flute Edition 2020 sits at the top of this pyramid of quality and shines with elegance, depth and plenty of melting. Meanwhile, Stoddens recommends that Grosses Gewäch be allowed to sit for five years before allowing them to get drunk for 15 to 25 years.
Source : Blick
I am Dawid Malan, a news reporter for 24 Instant News. I specialize in celebrity and entertainment news, writing stories that capture the attention of readers from all walks of life. My work has been featured in some of the world’s leading publications and I am passionate about delivering quality content to my readers.
