2017 Müller-Catoir Herrenletten

WINEMAKER: Martin Franzen
REGION: Pfalz, GER
VARIETAL: Riesling
VITICULTURE: Certified Organic

At a time when minimal intervention and the concept of terroir was still alien to the German wine lands, Hans-Günther Schwarz knew the score: you have to have an innate understanding of soil and site before you can make great wine. His legacy of low intervention viticulture and winemaking has gone on to inspire and educate a whole generation of young German winemakers, in the now-accepted theory that great wine is made in the vineyard not the cellar.

The Herrenletten Erste Lage sits adjacent to Bürgergarten. The name Herrenletten combines both the historical and the geological. The first part, Herren, indicates that the region was owned by noble landlords in the Middle Ages. The second part, letten, refers to the type of soil - sandy clay with layers of limestone and chalky clay. The oldest Riesling vines here are 40 years old (the site is also home to Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris), and the wine usually offers more youthful generosity than Bürgergarten.

As per the Bürgergarten, the wine is naturally fermented and raised in a mixture of steel tank and 5 year old, 600-litre Halbstück ovals (25%) for ten months. The 2017 is a much rounder, layered wine than the Bürgergarten above with lovely white peach, golden delicious and sweet mint notes shot through with laser-like acidity and salty minerality all leading to a wildly perfumed, tapering finish.