*To our restaurant brothers and sisters – we are thinking of you all the time and hoping you and your loved ones are safe and healthy; we hope this email is at least some fun reading, a distraction… and preparation for when we are all back to it! All love*
We worship at the alter of Riesling; you know that.
The problem with the 20th-century narrative of German wine is not that Riesling doesn’t deserve the attention it’s gotten, it’s that the other grapes haven’t gotten the attention they deserve.
Today we offer arevelatory red, Germany’s best take on Beaujolais meets Northern Rhône, a nervy, raw, wild, anxious, twisted-up and angry wine of soil and smoke.
This is a brooding wine with a dark-soil intensity, yet somehow also fresh: sous bois and stones with a shockingly bright citrus lift. Maybe this is something of the Loire as well: Cabernet Franc gone Cabernet Deutsch? Intense and saturating, the wine is somehow light, not delicate but rather agile with the bound-up energy of a wolf: high-acid, high-energy, high-tension.
The only thing low here is the ABV (10.5%) and the price at ~$30 a bottle (for the quality at least this is an absurd price). These are old vines planted in a soil so rocky it was worked with a horse for decades; the yields are paltry. “Flora,” pictured to the left, was the grandfather’s horse who helped plow and work these tough soils. Thus the cuvée name and the label (the label, by the way, was drawn by the grandmother).
The grape in this bottling? Dornfelder, a variety that is, in German wine circles at least, the joke of jokes. This is a grape that can give an enormous yield, has loose clusters that are quite resistant to rot and makes a wine with a dark color, that oh-so-important visual for many red wine drinkers. Add some oak chips and leave a little residual sugar and you have a “smooth” wine that appeals to a broad audience, is cheap, and in general, beyond boring.
Yet the Brand Dornfelder is wine is anything but a joke; this is bone dry, a looking glass into the soils and as serious as it gets.
I always say this when I’m trying to explain this wine and it’s simultaneously preposterous and absolutely true: This is the greatest Dornfelder on earth, period.
There is no secret here, no outlandish story or mythical provenance. It is simply a very good site, matched to older vines that are being farmed with respect and cellar work that is thoughtful and rigorous.
For so much of these “lesser” grapes, the true story involves economics. If Riesling is the only story you tell, then everything else is pushed to the side. That means the older vines of the “other” grapes are ripped up, they are pulled out of the top sites and planted in the lesser sites, they are harvested only when everything else has been taken care of and they are shown the least respect in the cellar; they are shaped to be “easy” or “fruity.”
Then, when the wine(s) aren’t very good, everyone says, “See, this grape is crap.” It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As always, the revolution begins in the periphery – it can never come from the center.
Daniel and Jonas Brand grew up in Bockenheim an der Weinstrasse, a tiny, rather unknown farming and wine village on the very northern edge of the Pfalz. They are 5th generation winemakers. In both soil and micro-climate, this area has more to do with the Rheinhessen than the “famous” Pfalz, an area some 30-40 minutes south.
I would imagine even the most studious German wine dork hadn’t ever come across this village, at least maybe until the Brand brothers took over the family estate in 2014.
Here, in the shadows of giants (the Pfalz to the south and Rheinhessen to the north), these little villages produced wines for their own communities for decades, for centuries. They were never streamlined for the whims of the international market and thus a rad diversity of grapes was preserved, from Riesling and Sylvaner (the nobility), to Weissburgunder, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (the Burgundians – these are limestone-rich soils) to Müller-Thurgau, Kerner, Portugieser, Lemberger and… Dornfelder (they farm more than 13 varieties).
While the brothers are savvy, having worked around the world, they are also smart enough to know the history here is not something to run away from, it is something to embrace.
At the top of their vineyard, the Sonnenberg, in one of the coldest and windiest and stoniest parts (the soil has, over the centuries, been washed down the hill leaving the limestone rocks almost exposed), Daniel and Jonas’ grandfather and father planted an acre-and-a-half of Dornfelder just over 40 years ago. This was, and is, simply a brutal place to work. The rocks in the soil would destroy the tractor and so the grandfather and father worked this site exclusively with their horse Flora.
For Daniel and Jonas, it is a part not only of their village and community, it is a part of their familial history. To give a site like this, to give vines like this, the attention they deserve is natural, instinctive. Yet at this moment, maybe, it’s not exactly an obvious commercial move. Long-winded emails like this are needed to give the wine a context, a frame of reference… to give this wine a heartfelt, soul-filled recommendation, which I strongly do.
I mean, why wouldn’t you want to experience the greatest Dornfelder on earth?If you are a fan of the wines of the Loire or the Northern Rhône, you should try this. Support small growers, support the periphery. Support, in this case at least, Dornfelder.
If you’re in the business, you know how to get in touch with us; if you don’t, you can always email orders@vomboden.com
If you’re just a curious adventurer, with maybe some free time on your hands and looking to expand your breadth of knowledge, email us at orders@vomboden.com and we’ll put you in touch with a retailer who either has this in stock or can get it for you!
Thank you so much and stay safe out there everyone.
– Stephen Bitterolf
NV Brand “Cuvée Flora” ~$30 a bottle
This non-vintage cuvée is a blend of 2018 (90%) and 2017 (10%). Daniel and Jonas have put an extraordinary amount of work into this vineyard, respecting its age and trying to find its balance. Yields have gone even lower, yet they have noted also the berries on the clusters are getting smaller, yet with thicker skins, denser and more flavorful. They harvest this wine early (the 2018 was harvested August 30th!) to keep the alcohol as low as possible and also to provide the wine with serious lift and acidity. Roughly 40% of the juice begins a carbonic fermentation; 60% is kept on the skins and stems for 4-6 weeks. The wine is fermented in old 400L barrels and left on the full lees for over 12 months. It is bottled unfined and unfiltered.