Two Bottles Sermann
We are drinking two Spätburgunder from the Ahr from Weingut Sermann: one bottle of Marienthaler Trotzenberg 2019 and one bottle of Altenahrer Im Eck from the same year.
It was announced and now we’re going through with it. We’re drinking wines from the Ahr again. Since the Ahr is indisputably red-wine country, the choice falls once more on Spätburgunder. About 80 percent of the slightly more than 500 hectares of the region are planted with red varieties. According to Destatis, with this total area it isn’t in last place, but the gap among the four smallest winegrowing regions, in ascending order by area Hessische Bergstraße, Mittelrhein, Sachsen, and the Ahr, isn’t particularly large. However, it is probably the region with the highest share of red wine in Germany. Close behind that, Württemberg.
Purely geographically, this time we’re moving a bit further upriver westward to Altenahr and thus to the western tip of the region. Lukas Sermann makes wine here on the steep slopes on roughly 10 hectares. The family can look back on a winemaking tradition going back to the 18th century, but in 1936 they swapped the steep slopes of the Mosel for those of the Ahr. In 2019 Lukas took over responsibility for the wines and still does. Even after the flood that destroyed Altenahr and the rest of the Ahr valley in 2021. The grapes for the two bottles today grew before the water came. One bottle is from the Trotzenberg in Marienthal, a little further downstream. The other bottle from the Eck site near Altenahr itself. The Eck has even made it to its own entry in the German Wikipedia. Pretty spectacular how the terraces hang there on the steep slope. The vines grow here on greywacke with slate weathering, loess and loam in the subsoil. Both wines are matured in wooden barrels, I couldn’t find anything about the proportion of new wood and used wood.
The Trotzenberg, which I always want to type as Trotzdemberg for a moment, for whatever reason and something you won’t understand in english I guess, starts with an astonishing amount of spice. It has that feeling that you can already smell how the wine is going to feel on the tongue. Although I’ve become cautious about predictions in that regard, too often I was completely off. It’s dark, berry, herbal, with old wood from the attic, a bit of earth and sour cherries. What the nose promises fits here, because it tastes exactly the way it smells. Lots of spice up front, then acidity and then berries with a solid portion of grip, where freshness and tannin balance each other. A touch of eucalyptus passes by when you smell after drinking.
It gets even darker overnight, the spice remains, but only on the nose. When drinking, it has become totally soft and rather strokes the tongue like cotton. Somehow funny how what’s in the mouth and in the nose now diverge so widely. The Pinot tastes somehow fruitier, fresher and younger today. I really like the acid structure, which once again manages to rein everything in and still grab hold on the tongue. I can imagine we’ve hit a pretty good moment to pull this bottle.
The wine from the Eck is noticeably more austere at first. It’s somehow rough-edged, desiccated, with damsons, dark dried fruit and dried herbs. If you really inhale for a long time, it quickly becomes ever fresher and sweeter. It reminds me a bit of red juice from the Reformhaus, a healthy store, Rotkäppchen is on the tip of my tongue, but that’s fizzy swill, and my better half then says Rotbäckchen. Well, almost right. There’s a bit of orange in there too and fresh wood. What started out so austere now seems noticeably juicier on the nose than its counterpart from the Trotzenberg. Only on the nose, though, because when drinking, the wines, in terms of the feeling they trigger, aren’t that far apart. I find the Im Eck a bit more charming, fresher, with Amaro and cocktail bitters, with length and intensity and lots of depth. I like the Trotzenberg, I like the Im Eck a little more.
And on the second evening it even manages to ratchet things up another notch. There’s simply more now. More fruit, more depth, more complexity. Right now it reminds me of cherry Danish and I like cherry Danish a lot. A bit of vanilla, creaminess, the Amaro is still there, plus raspberry, juniper and other stewpot spices. And this one still tastes the way it smells. Polished tannin, acidity, length. Here too I think we’ve caught a really good moment, but I’d grant the wine a few more years than the Trotzenberg. And somehow it’s always reassuring when the more expensive wine is also the wine I like better. It could well be that three years ago or so I would have sorted this the other way round, but today the Eck is a nose ahead. Both are great Spätburgunder though.