20213041_WGDE2021_ENGL

View of the Schambachtal: home of Weingut Höfflin
PROTECTED SPECIES
Baden – bona fide Pinot. Or are we missing something?
WORDS ULRICH SAUTTER
Each year, it is roughly the same.
During events like the Mainzer
Weinbörse (the vintage presentation
of the VDP estates each April in Mainz)
where winemakers from all German
regions present their wines to the trade and
press, with Baden’s Spätburgunders being
amongst the ‘must-taste’ wines. Most of
the attendees are of course happy to pass
Chardonnay at the Baden stands and have
a quick sip of Weissburgunder and perhaps
even a Grauburgunder? “Go on then,
alright, just a sip!” “There’s also Riesling”
– “oh, no, rather not, no thank you, I have
to get going…”
Nobody will complain openly about this familiar
pattern: Baden winemakers are after
all very happy that their Pinot-varieties
enjoy such demand. But dig a little deeper
and there is real frustration. Why? Because
Baden, this long region which stretches 160
miles from its subregions of Badische Bergstrasse
to Markgräflerland and almost 170
miles from the subregions of Taubertal to
Bodensee (Lake Constance), has a wealth
of local traditions which throughout
history have always endured the prevailing
Pinot-paradigm without ever getting subsumed
into it.
Thus, once we had finished all the tastings
for this guide, in order to do our own little
bit for biodiversity, we counted how many
of the best 200 Baden wines were made
from grapes other than Pinot-varieties or
Chardonnay. We tasted a total of 597 wines
from Baden, and focused on the best-rated.
For starters, there were two 94-point wines
of real exoticism: a sweet Muskateller made
from dried grapes by Weingut Moosmann
in the Breisgau subregion, and the bone-dry
Gutedel »Jaspis 10hoch4« by Hanspeter
Ziereisen from the Markgräflerland
subregion. Four non-Pinots scored 93
points: two experimental, two classic. In
the former camp we have a skin-fermented
Souvignier Gris, a disease-resistant ‘Piwi’-
56 falstaff Wine Guide Germany 2021