2012 Schweigener Kammerberg Spätburgunder Grosses Gewächs

When I last saw Fritz Becker, he was still limping from a tractor accident. The color in his cheeks made it clear, though, that he still enjoys spending most of his time in the vines, where the estate is grafting young French clones onto old rootstock in order to profit from the age of their vineyards. We tasted every barrel of his four best Pinot Noirs that morning, an exercise he does each year before bottling in order to declassify any elements that he believes are underperforming. In fact, it is his son, also named Fritz, who has not only taken over responsibility for the cellar, but is also slowly becoming the face of the estate. Given the showers that swept over the region during harvest in 2013, the two made none of their top white wines in that vintage, which is why I concentrate on the 2012 Pinot Noirs below. As I wrote of the 2011s, they also appear to be a touch more extracted and more obviously oaked than were their predecessors, which Fritz Junior believes will provide them with better aging potential. Without any doubt, though, they are consistently among the finest produced in Germany in any given vintage.