Holger Koch Pinot Noir Herrenstück 2023 75 cl.

This single-vineyard Pinot from Holger Koch is a taut, slender and precise cool-climate wine, offering a serious wine experience combined with remarkable drinkability — something you do not come across every day.

Weingut Holger Koch is a small, sustainable producer in the higher-lying part of Kaiserstuhl, making finely detailed, precise wines with soul and substance from eight hectares of estate-owned, elevated vineyards located right by the winery in Bickensohl. A small but modern and carefully designed gravity-flow winery makes the production of top-quality wines possible.

The Pinot vines on Bickensohler Herrenstück are mainly a low-yielding selection massale of Dijon 777, grown on a thick layer of loess over volcanic rock. In the early 2000s, Holger Koch was the first producer in Baden to introduce these new clones.

The grapes are hand-harvested and sorted both in the vineyard and at the winery, before spontaneous fermentation with 2½ weeks of maceration. In 2023, around 30% whole clusters were used — a proportion that varies according to the character of the vintage. The wine was aged for 11 months in 500-litre Stockinger oak barrels and 300-litre barrels from Eric Millard, both lightly toasted and with a smaller proportion of new oak. The wine has never been pumped; everything is handled by gravity, including bottling. No sulphur is added during vinification — only a little at bottling. Its remarkably moderate 12.5% alcohol contributes to the wine’s high drinkability.

The aroma and flavour sit within the red-fruit spectrum, with raspberry, cherry and a touch of strawberry. It has taut, juicy and intense primary fruit, while the oak is barely noticeable. In other words, the style is not an extravagant “Vosne-wannabe”, but a slender, focused Pinot in which the high quality of the grapes is obvious and not wrapped in oak-generated luxury tannins. A wine for purists — though your father-in-law can certainly join in too.

Serve slightly chilled, at 13–16°C. This is a highly versatile food wine, but it also works beautifully as a relaxed glass on its own when you want flavour intensity and freshness without accompanying structure.

It can surely age for a long time, but the deliciousness level is high enough that most bottles will be drunk in their youth — and there is no shame in that.