Kallstadter Steinacker Pinot Noir – 2021

Kallstadter Steinacker Spätburgunder 2021 from Weingut Rings matures under nocturnal winds

The 2021 Kallstadter Steinacker Spätburgunder from Weingut Rings is a dry red wine from a VDP.Erste Lage in Kallstadt, where the sparse subsoil forces the vines to root deeply. The wine rested on its lees for sixteen months and was subsequently bottled without filtration or fining.

The 2021 Kallstadter Steinacker Spätburgunder is a dry single-vineyard wine from Weingut Rings in Freinsheim, harvested from vines grown from French clones. It presents itself in a purist style, without makeup or the intervention of barrique barrels, following a Burgundian understanding of red wine. With 12.5 percent alcohol, it demonstrates that depth has nothing to do with power.

The winery's coolest site

The Kallstadter Steinacker measures 151 hectares and has been documented as a vineyard since 1270, making it one of the oldest names in the region. Rings farms about 4 hectares of it, spread across plots situated between 160 and 240 meters above sea level.

What distinguishes this site from all others owned by the winery is its coolness. At night, winds descend from the Palatinate Forest, dropping the temperature so that the berries ripen more slowly and retain their acidity longer. If you stand among the vines on a summer evening, you can feel the air turn within an hour.

The soil is lean; limestone and rugged rock lie just beneath the surface, and there is little to be found there other than minerals and water from the depths. This is exactly what gives this wine its stony, almost unapproachable character.

Concentrated cherry, herbal spice, and wet stone

The nose features cherry, but not broad and sweet; rather, it is stewed and concentrated, much like what remains at the bottom of a pot. Alongside this lies a delicate herbal spice that is more reminiscent of freshly picked thyme than a spice rack.

On the palate, it feels brilliant and juicy, with a clarity that only wines without filtration or fining possess. The stony tone remains in the background throughout, emerging clearly once more on the finish.

At the table, it finds its match in pan-seared venison saddle, celeriac purée with brown butter, or a pepper sauce whose heat picks up the wine's herbal notes. A decanter does it good, as the initial closed nature of the wine opens up more quickly.

Whole clusters in wooden fermenters

Following hand-harvesting and a second selection at the winery, most of the grapes are destemmed, but 15 percent go into the vat as whole clusters. The fermentation vessels here are made of wood, not steel, and the grapes enter them without any pumping.

A stem provides no aroma, but rather structure. Its tannins are coarser and more astringent than those from the berry skins; they cut across the fruit, giving the wine length rather than width.

In addition, the stems act like a lattice in the must, keeping the berries loose, keeping the fermentation cooler, and imparting that spiciness to the wine which is often called "green" in Burgundy, without ever tasting unripe. Too much makes it edgy, while a little makes it exciting—and that is the whole art.

From a vineyard that yields 4,200 liters per hectare, this process creates a wine that spends sixteen months in second- and third-fill barrels. The Grosses Gewächs from Kallstadter Saumagen stands one step above it, and the rest of the assortment can be found in the Weingut Rings hub.

Kallstadter Steinacker Spätburgunder 2021 – a red wine and its data

• Origin Germany
• Region Pfalz
• Winery Rings
• VDP.Erste Lage
• Grape variety Spätburgunder
• 12.5% vol alcohol
• 0.1 g/l residual sugar
• 6.0 g/l acidity

Organic control number – DE-ÖKO-022 German Agriculture