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Weingut Sturm

The Mittelrhein is Germany’s second-smallest official growing region, with only around 1,156 vine acres (two-thirds Riesling, 10% Pinot Noir), most of them proximate to Bacharach and Boppard. Downstream along the Rhine from its confluence with the Mosel at Koblenz, remaining viticulture consists of sporadic bands narrowly hugging the river all the way to the suburbs of Bonn. I was thus surprised on entering tiny Leutesdorf – 21 gently winding kilometers north of Koblenz – at how many slopes were in cultivation and how many wineries were advertising. The impression deceives, explained ex-financial journalist turned winegrower Martin Sturm. “There are in fact ten bottling growers in town,” he noted, “but eight of them have no successor and are over 60. So things could easily tip in the wrong direction” – viticulturally, that is – as they have long since in many a Mittelrhein village, including ones that, thanks to serving as bedroom communities or luring tourists, aren’t on the whole doing badly.

Viticulture was thriving sufficiently in Leutesdorf in the early 1970s for its vineyards to have gotten the wholesale restructuring known as Flurbereinigung, so the community’s oldest vines (overwhelmingly Riesling) are only just turning 50. Leutesdorf was accorded three Einzellagen in Germany’s 1971 Wine Law. In 2006, these were conflated into a single official site, Gartenlay, reference to which is thus superfluous. And the village’s own name is so buried in the fine print details on the back labels of Sturm’s wines – it won’t, of course, be allowed on that of the Syrah – that I have also not included it in my identification of his wines. (Fun fact: Venantius Fortunatus’ poem of 588 tracing his journey down the Mosel to the Rhine places vineyards opposite Andernach – "Antonnacensis Castelli" – arguably rendering Leutesdorf the earliest pinpointed wine locale anywhere on the Rhine!)

I was here to meet Sturm after a recommendation from Florian Weingart – though it turns out that Sturm credits the Ratzenbergers for his greatest influence and assistance prior to establishing his winery in 2010 – and after subsequent correspondence revealed that Sturm is passionate about establishing Syrah on a portion of his steep slopes. That’s not just because he’s crazy about Côte Rôtie and Hermitage, but because a comparatively recent (circa 11,000 BC) deposit of volcanic ash and pumice (Bims) over the slate raised soil pH to levels comparable with those of the northern Rhône. A Syrah enthusiast myself, I helped Sturm get assistance from Eric Texier for a plan to graft over old Riesling vines. Meantime, I was more than curious to taste his inaugural 2000 Syrah, harvested from the “clone 48” familiar in Germany. I disappointed Sturm in judging some of his Pinots done no favors by his hodgepodge of in part fashionable brand-name barriques, a problem scarcely peculiar to German red winemaking, much less that of the Mittelrhein or at this address. Nevertheless, Sturm’s reds offer fascinating glimpses of a potential future, and many of his Rieslings proved deliciously distinctive. (As final blending decisions had not been rendered on Sturm’s vintage 2020 Pinots at the time of my visit, I have not offered any notes from barrel on those.)

From Mittelrhein 2019-2020: A Misunderstood Region (Jul 2022) by David Schildknecht

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2020 Syrah

Color: Red

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Weingut Sturm

2020 Syrah

2019 Pinot Noir

2019 Pinot Noir Reserve

2018 Pinot Noir Reserve du Patron

2016 Pinot Noir Reserve

2020 Riesling Vom Schiefer trocken

2020 Riesling Kabinett trocken

2020 Riesling Spätlese trocken

2020 Riesling Hinterm Haus Kabinett halbtrocken

2020 Riesling Kurve Spätlese

2019 Riesling Kabinett trocken

2019 Riesling Spätlese trocken

2019 Kabinett Hinterm Haus halbtrocken

2019 Riesling Kurve Spätlese

2018 Riesling Steinbruch Reserve Spätlese trocken

2018 Riesling Kuve Kabinett

2018 Riesling Auslese

2017 Riesling Hinterm Haus Kabinett halbtrocken

2016 Riesling Kabinett trocken

2016 Riesling Steinbruch Reserve Spätlese trocken

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