When we caught up with Marto and Alanna earlier this month, they were still reeling from an intense harvest. Long days of picking were rewarded with high quality grapes that ripened in a short time window. Typically, they would harvest into October, but with Riesling hot on the heels of their other varieties, this month has brought an earlier-than-usual quietness as autumn settles upon Rheinhessen. The winery is in Flonheim, a small village in Germany’s largest wine growing region. Martin ‘Marto’ Wörner took on the family farm in 2017 and was joined by his partner, Alanna La Gamba, a few years later. Together, they farm 10 hectares, producing Marto’s wines alongside Alanna’s sparkling line, Vin de La Gamba. Marto’s wines have held their own for years now. Sipped and celebrated in wine bars and restaurants, and savoured alongside many a home-cooked dinner, they are distinguished not only by a delicate balance of lightness and complexity, but by the sandstone rock featured on the bottles. Intent on making wine that shows its origin, Marto found himself prevented by German law from using the name of the village on the labels. Resolute in his commitment to producing pure, additive-free wines, Marto’s wines are unfiltered, unsulphured, and deemed atypical for the area. Suspended in shifting forms, label to label, the rock remains — a nod to Flonheim and its characteristic terroir.
For years, Côte de Flon has been patiently waiting in the wings, and in 2023 it took centre stage; a direct press version of Weiss, Marto’s field blend orange wine, inspired largely by a memorable bottle of Dessous de Table from Catherine Riss in Alsace. Two years of aging, longer than the majority of Marto’s wines, was a combination of creativity and necessity. When frost affected 50% of the vines in 2024 there was plenty of unplanned barrel space, and they decided to preserve the barrels in the best possible way by leaving them filled with the previous year’s wine, waiting patiently to see where the extra months of aging would lead. 20 or so new 500-litre oak barrels from Burgundy were used, along with some larger vessels including Doppelstück (2400 litres) and Stückfass (1200 litres). Despite the new barrels, the oak note is shy and refined, elegant rather than overpowering. Bottled in June ’25, Côte de Flon is the table wine that Marto and Alanna had been waiting for: complex, multi-layered, full of life and with a sexy reduction on the nose.