This is the wine previously known as Weiler Spatburgunder, produced from a handful of sites close to the town of Weil am Rhein, on the lower slopes of the Tullinger Berg mountain on heavy clay soils with limestone. Fine red berries – raspberry and red currant coulis, moving to a sous bois now, with crushed leaves with a bright mineral seam running through it. So mouth-watering – very long in the mouth, with a texture like sun, and a mouthfeel that pirouettes between fruit, spice, rich perfume and bright mineral lift. However many bottles of this you buy, it will be too few.

#Tasting#

From Christoph Schneider: the grapes come from the village of Weil am Rhein, South-West facing vineyards, with limestone and more heavy clay than the other villages. The Weil am Rhein is made from German clones around 20-30 years old and younger French clones around 10-15 years old. Sometimes less steep than our single vineyards wines. Usually we work with around 30-50% whole bunch here. Although in 2022 due to hail everything was destemmed. Depending on the vintage also some declassified Schlipf and Kapf barrels go into Weil am Rhein. Only barrique barrels are used and they are from Francois Freres, Chassin, Damy and Rousseau. Like all our wines we use very little new new oak, buying 10% new barrels for the cellar each year.

Inspired by Burgundy, but definitely wines unto themselves, we first met Clauss son Johannes in 2017, when he had just returned from a year’s stint working at Gevrey domaine Rossignol-Trapet, and as he has gradually taken over the reins, the wines have only got better. They farm a total of 15ha of vines, scattered across 70 individual parcels insidethe Tullinger Berg nature reserve, with their very best sites sit on the the geological marvel that is the Weiler Schlipf a seam of limestone rising up out of the Baden landscape that benefits from unrivaled sunshine hours. This provides the vines and fruit with taut minerality. This is the southernmost vineyard in Germany.