Over the past few years, Georg Lingenfelder has been steadily transforming the family winery. The Lingenfelders have made wine for at least 500 years, working with local varieties and a low intervention approach, but Georg is taking things a step further. Georg tends over half of the vineyards now, focussing on rebuilding soil structure and regenerating the land, while making wines that offer a new expression of the region’s traditional varieties. Maceration plays an important role in this, not least because it helps to stabilise wines made with low or no sulphur, the tannins preventing oxidation. Ten years ago, Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris) with skin contact and colour barely existed; rather, it was an easygoing, inoffensive and, more often than not, immemorable wine. Georg takes a different perspective. Seeking character in his wines, he uses skin maceration to bring structure, and finds edges and acidity inspired by the wines of northern Italy and Alsace.
Grauburgunder Maische 2023 is far from your typical Grauburgunder. Lots of sun during the growing season and six days of maceration give it plenty of colour in the glass, and it balances light tannins with good acidity. A brave, complex wine that demands your attention, harvested from a single vineyard and aged in local oak barrels with 14 months on the lees. This year, Georg has been working with the vines to protect the grapes from weeks of hot sun. Rather than removing leaves around the fruit to give more sun exposure, the canopy has been left largely untouched so as to offer much-needed shade. Among these more wild-looking vineyards, Georg and his team will spend around two and a half weeks picking — a harvest that, 20-30 years ago, would have been spread over anything from five to seven weeks. The gaps between south and east facing sites are condensed as the different grape varieties ripen closer together, and it will be an early, fast, and intense harvest.