When you are about to tell the wine history of Palatinate, the famous central German land, you can not help but mention the history of the Bürklin-Wolf winery. Without being too long-winded, it is enough to remember that already in 1580 Bernard Bürklin, who also became mayor of Wachenheim, had acquired many lands, allocating them to agriculture and viticulture. From then on, the Bürklins continued to prosper, despite the German Civil War, until 1875, when “Doctor” Albert Bürklin, Reichstag vice president, married Luisa Wolf and with her (and her inheritance) expands the estate making it a viticulture model for its time. After the Second World War it will be the turn of another Albert Bürklin (grandson of the former) to rebuild the estate from the rubble with the purchase of additional land and the modernization of production techniques.
Today the winery is run by their descendant, the oenologist Bettina Bürklin-von Guradze who, in 2001, has started the total conversion of vineyards to the biodynamic system, and revised the classification of wines produced according to a standard halfway between the past and the future. As for biodynamic agriculture, everything was born from reading a text by Nicolas Joly that triggered a process of study, internal discussions and comparison with other wineries, both in Germany and around the world, to try to understand the best way to go once embraced this productive philosophy. The new land classification, however, was carried on with the use of a system in which the classification rules adopted in 1828 by the Kingdom of Bavaria were united with the French model in use in Burgundy. It is thanks to this classification that Bürklin-Wolf’s vineyards are subdivided, exclusively on the basis of intrinsic qualities of the terroir, into 3 levels: G.C. (the highest, inspired by the Grand Cru), the P.C .(the intermediate, inspired by the Premier Cru) and Ortsrieslinge (the lowest, inspired by the Village).
Among the owned vineyards we find the G.C. Kirchenstück, considered the best vineyard of the Palatinate already in 1828 and that, already 200 years before, had enjoyed the honor of arms, during the Thirty Years’ War, by a Spanish general as if it were a valiant enemy general. The vineyard covers just 3.6 hectares and, since 1828, Bürklin-Wolf has half a hectare of it worked manually or, at best, with the horse, biodynamic since 2005 (it was one of the first in the winery). After a delicate selection in plant, the grapes arrive in the cellar to ferment spontaneously, thanks to indigenous yeasts, and then age in old oak barrels for about 10 months, before bottling and marketing.
The 2016 vintage has a straw yellow color with an olfactory range that opens on notes of dried apricot, peach in syrup, cedar peel and hydrocarbon, followed by kumquat, hawthorn, chlorophyll, and chestnut honey, with final balsamic echoes of flint and eucalyptus. The palate, even in its freshness, has a pleasant glyceric softness, incredible depth and excellent mineral flavor; all enriched by the return of yellow fruit and spices that accompany the sip until an excellent length closing.
Rating: 93/100
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