Weingut Dr. Wehrheim

The Free Bacchus Story

Almost nothing else in the Pfalz grows on Rotliegendes, a red stone laid down in the Permian, long before the limestone and sandstone the rest of the region sits on. Birkweiler Kastanienbusch does, and it is the reason a small family estate in the quiet southern end of the Pfalz gets spoken of alongside names from far grander addresses.

Karl Wehrheim started the place after the First World War and bottled his own wine when a good many of his neighbours were still selling theirs off in bulk. His son expanded it. Karl-Heinz Wehrheim has run it since 1992 and now runs it with his son Franz. Twenty hectares, a third of them steep enough that no machine will go up, which settles how the pruning and the picking get done: by hand, every year, because there is no other way.

Dry German Riesling is worth understanding before you buy your first bottle, because it is not what the country's reputation abroad prepares you for — high acid, alcohol usually under thirteen per cent, citrus and orchard fruit and stone rather than oak or sweetness. The top rung is the Grosses Gewächs, usually shortened to GG, the VDP's mark for a dry wine off a classified site. About a third of Wehrheim's twenty hectares is Riesling. Much of the rest is Weißburgunder and the other Pinots, which ripen well this far south and which the house has been known for nearly as long.

The estate farms biodynamically and sits on respekt-BIODYN's register, which will not have a grower who is not certified organic first, so the one certificate carries the other inside it. What that buys you in the glass is a Kastanienbusch Riesling with grapefruit and hard stone in it and a grip at the end that takes a few years to unwind. It does not flatter anyone on opening, and the family who make it seem entirely at peace with that.