Grosskarlbacher Burgweg Pinot Noir – 2015

Burgweg Spätburgunder 2015, the cool Pinot from Wageck

The 2015 Grosskarlbacher Burgweg Spätburgunder from Wageck is a dry single-vineyard Pinot Noir from the northern Palatinate, hand-harvested and spontaneously fermented. At the 2023 Mundus Vini Summer Tasting, the 2015 vintage from the Grosskarlbacher Burgweg won a gold medal.

Grosskarlbacher Burgweg Spätburgunder is a red wine from a parcel of the Burgweg vineyard near Großkarlbach, situated on a south-facing slope, bottled in a 0.75-liter bottle. At Wageck, the 2015 vintage was bottled unfiltered, and it carries its eleven years with poise.

Cherry, smoke, and limestone in a cool red wine

The 2015 Grosskarlbacher Burgweg Spätburgunder from Wageck smells of red berries, cherry, smoke, and tobacco, with a hint of tree bark and a minerality that extends into the salty finish. It emerges from the glass clear and spiced with oak, without the wood masking the fruit, and on the palate, it remains juicy, taut, and astonishingly fresh for its age.

The tannin is fine, still youthful, with grip; a certain acidic bite keeps it lively, and in the background lies a dark spice that makes the finish long and mineral. The fruit remains pure-toned; nothing about it seems tired. It is a Palatinate red wine that makes a quiet entrance and stays a long time. Nothing about it is sweet, nothing jammy, and that is precisely its charm. It tastes of a cool morning over the Burgweg and of a cellar where no one is in a rush. Chapeau.

An entire evening with game, duck, and porcini mushrooms

The Burgweg likes it hearty and is a classic pairing for game dishes, duck breast with red cabbage, or risotto with porcini mushrooms. On the board alongside it lies a Tuscan wild boar salami, while tagliolini with truffle steam in the pot. At 13.0% ABV, it can last through a long evening without becoming heavy.

We serve it at 16 to 18 degrees Celsius – cooler than room temperature, so the fruit remains forward. If you would like to drink it in comparison, you will find other Spätburgunder from the Palatinate in our red wine selection. If you want to know who is behind it, read more at Weingut Wageck-Pfaffmann.

Hand-harvesting, eleven days on the skins, and patience in the barrel

For the Burgweg, Frank and Thomas Pfaffmann harvest selectively by hand and sort a second time at the sorting table, with yields of 20 to 25 hectoliters per hectare. The must remains on the skins for eleven days and is punched down daily; then it ferments spontaneously over three weeks with the vineyard's indigenous yeasts. From November, the wine rests in barriques, where the malic acid naturally converts into milder lactic acid, until May.

"The soils around Bissersheim are predestined for more," says Thomas Pfaffmann, referring to the low yields and the ripe grapes that the estate receives year after year. His wines are meant to be quiet, bone-dry, taut, and never push themselves into the foreground – that is exactly how the Burgweg tastes.

A single-vineyard wine from Großkarlbach with long-lasting appeal

The Burgweg is located near Großkarlbach in the Leiningerland, at the northern end of the Palatinate. The vines for this wine were planted in 2005, so they were just ten years old at the time of the 2015 harvest, and Wageck gives its Burgweg at least 15 years from the harvest year, which leaves this wine with some good years ahead.

The 2018 vintage from the same site received 94.5 points at the 2025 Falstaff Spätburgunder Trophy, and the Falstaff Wine Guide 2026 lists the estate with four stars. A quiet star, this Palatinate wine.

Grosskarlbacher Burgweg Spätburgunder 2015 – a wine and its data

• Origin Germany
• Region Palatinate
• Winery Wageck-Pfaffmann, Bissersheim
• Single-vineyard wine Grosskarlbacher Burgweg
• Grape variety Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir)
• Vintage 2015, dry, unfiltered, aged in barriques
• 13.0% vol alcohol