Enderle and Moll

The most southerly of Germany’s winemaking regions, Baden (often paired with its forested neighbor to the east, Württemberg) has in recent years become home to some of this northern European nation’s, and indeed the world’s, most exciting renditions of Pinot Noir. It is so often stated as to be nearly trite within wine circles to mention Germany as a potential “New Burgundy,” with seasonal temperatures rising at the behest of an ever-warming climate (the dread inherent in the success of lengthened grape-ripening here is clear). Paired with this new wiggle-room in its yearly ebb and flow of temperature, rainfall, and the like, Baden is home to one of our favorite producers, Enderle & Moll. Founded in 2007 by Sven Enderle and Florian Moll, after a world’s-worth of education and harvests spent abroad, their winery has trod out a new path in their home-region of Baden, one focused on pairing organic and biodynamic viticultural practices with some of the oldest vines of Pinot Noir in all of Germany. Given their pristine soils of both sandstone and limestone, here was the unlikely birthplace of Spatbürgunder’s new and rich life. Their expressions of Pinot have garnered such unexpected, widespread, and fervent praise that even Jancis Robinson has officially placed them in her “cult” category.