2021 Spätburgunder

The Rings estate in Freinsheim, founded in 2001, is run by brothers Steffen and Andreas Rings. In the family’s 11 hectares of land, they grew grapes as well as apples and cherries as full-time fruit farmers who sold grapes in bulk. Eight years apart in age, older brother Steffen Rings was the one who decided that the farm should become a wine estate. His brother Andreas followed a few years later – after training with Wagner-Stempel in Rheinhessen. Andreas Rings notes that he and his brother enjoyed great freedom because they could start from a clean slate while also learning from Philipp Kuhn and the Knipsers. While their winery is in Freinsheim, they bought their first parcel within the Kallstadter Saumagen in 2006. In the same year, they started converting their farming to organic certification, working with spontaneous ferments and stopped fining. In 2015, their sister Simone Rings, a trained sommelier, joined the operation to look after export and communication. In the same year, they were invited to become VDP members. A new and spacious winery was finished in 2018 and gave them another boost since they were no longer “crammed in.” That the brothers had and have ambition is evident. “We just always carried on. We continued evolving, and while the steps today are slower, evolution never stops,” Andreas Rings says. They now farm 39 hectares, of which 75% are split equally into Riesling and Pinot Noir, with the remaining 25% taken up by Pinots Blanc and Gris, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, the latter in the Freinsheimer Schwarzes Kreuz site that surrounds the winery. The wines do warrant the brothers’ stellar rise. That 2021 was a difficult year, as shown in the 2021 Pinot Noirs. Andreas Rings said, “it was the most challenging red wine harvest since 2006.” No Merlot or Cabernet was made. With Pinot Noir, they lost a lot of crop to Peronospora, and while the dry harvest did not lead to secondary rot, they had to contend with the presence of the fruit fly Drosophila Suzukii. “In all our Erste and Grosse Lagen we removed all infected berries, it took our team two weeks.” It was either that or harvesting unripe grapes before the rot set in – so they got an additional sorting table. In the end, they harvested 15 hL/ha, as Rings put it: “a lot of effort for little wine.” But the way the Pinot Noirs were handled and made shows great sensitivity. Clearly, elegance is the aim. Usually, there are small proportions of whole bunches in the ferments, but not in 2021. The estate Pinot Noirs often see new oak as the Rings brothers prefer second-use oak for their single-site wines. All the Pinot Noirs spend 16 months in 228-liter barrels. The wines from Leistadter Felsenberg are of particular note. Riesling never receives skin contact. With some parcels pressed whole bunch, it is fermented in a mix of various barrel sizes and stainless steel. The wines then stay on gross lees, and malolactic fermentation is allowed to go ahead if it happens. The style is bone-dry. The 2022 Rieslings are clear-cut and fresh. Andreas Rings says: “The Riesling harvest finished on 24 September, and then the rain came.”