2016 Riesling Basalt

The Odinstal estate is unusual in numerous respects, not least its location. These are the highest-elevation vines in the Pfalz Mittelhaardt and constitute their own Einzellage – Wachenheimer Odinstal – separated by only a narrow strip of woods from the Pechsteinkopf, a volcanic peak whose dramatic crater was greatly enlarged by some two centuries of use –until the 1980s – as a quarry for basaltic building and paving stones. The imposing home and cellar were built (and the first vineyards planted) in 1802 as a summer retreat by Johann Ludwig Wolf of the eponymous Weingut J. L. Wolf, in the gaming room of which Wolf allegedly lost the property at cards to another Wachenheim grower, from whose descendants Thomas Hensel purchased it in 1998 to fulfill a familiar dream of owning a winery. In 2004, Hensel hired Andreas Schumann to run the operation. Schumann, who like so many other Pfalz vintners across three generations was inspired by the principles of long-time Müller-Catoir cellarmaster Hans-Günter Schwarz (“activism in the vineyard, minimalism in the cellar”), understudied with Philipp Wittmann during the latter’s transition from a longstanding organic regimen to a biodynamic one. Soon, Weingut Odinstal was being farmed with biodynamic self-sufficiency and practicing minimalistic, non-invasive vinification and élevage to an extent that counted as extreme – and still does – by German standards, but that has positioned it to benefit from exposure in Natural Wine circles. In recent years, Odinstal has been hosting an annual series of lectures, seminars and workshops in organic and biodynamic viticulture, with not only an international cast of wine growers and agronomists but also researchers from numerous prestigious viticultural schools presenting.

After repeated admonitions by my long-time correspondent Bill Hooper to visit this estate where he worked before moving back to the US to raise Riesling in the Willamette Valley, I finally made it to Weingut Odinstal in late summer 2017 and found their wines utterly fascinating and infectiously drinkable. Conditioned on this estate’s belief in the value of lees contact and their consequent leisurely bottling practices, the wines I tasted had all been recently bottled. Inexperienced as I am, I could only make educated, conservative guesses as to the aging potential of the young wines I tasted. The oldest vines on which any of the wines draw were planted in the late 1970s, whereas there has been significant planting under the present owner, and blocks representing well-selected vine material clearly have their best vintages still ahead of them. A remarkable feature of the Odinstal vineyards is a block of vines that has not been pruned since 2008 (and another not since 2010). These have adapted to yield copious but distinctly loose clusters featuring tiny and, as tasting confirms, well-concentrated berries. Schumann reports that it requires the equivalent of 200 man-hours per hectare (80-plus per acre) to harvest them, on top of which roughly 15% of these minuscule fruits are hand-destemmed so that they can enter the ferment intact. The wines resulting from this unorthodox approach – like those of similarly anachronistic experiments by Abbatucci in Corsica and Meinklang in Burgenland – are quite distinctly delicious. Remarkable, too, chez Odinstal is that the property features three utterly distinct sorts of soil, based on fossiliferous red Triassic marl (Keuper), Permian Buntsandstein, and (naturally) basalt. The corresponding bottlings offer outstanding opportunities for contemplating the influence of these soils and comparing Riesling grown on all three. (The estate’s total surface area of not quite 14 acres includes one small rented block in the adjacent Einzellage Wachenheimer Schlossberg and another 1.5 miles east and at low elevation in Friedelsheim.)

Given Odinstal’s high altitude (commemorated in those bottlings labeled “350 N.N.” for its meters above sea level) as well as its proximity to woods, harvest here frequently extends well into November. And unsurprisingly, 2016 was such an instance with a vengeance, the final grapes (Silvaner, no less!) having only arrived in the press house on November 22. The nearest well-known Einzellagen are Wachenheimer Altenburg and Forster Musenhang – both directly east of Odinstal, and although lower down, already notoriously late-ripening. In view of this situation – not to mention given their viticultural rigor and experimental spirit – the Odinstal estate is surely well poised to meet the challenges of global warming.