Scheuermann, "Vin de Soda" NV

As the importer’s profile on Weingut Scheuermann begins, “We don’t make German wine. We make Pfalz wine. In a Loire style,” you get the sense of rootedness and aspiration. A kind of figurative picture of a grapevine – rooted in the Pfalz’s soil, reaching in heart, toward the Loire’s sky. What Gabriel Scheuermann in this quote may have meant was there is an honest testament to place intrinsic to their wines (their place being the Pfalz region of eastern-central Germany) while there is at the same time an undoubted love for the wines typical of the Loire valley, that is, fresh, acid driven, and mixing minerality with cores of tight fruit. If this were the case, then he was spot on. The wines Gabriel and his brother Simon produce are unbelievably fresh akin to the Loire & yet undeniably from a colder environment than that famous valley – this cuvée in particular has a body-artistry about it, convincing you it is not sparkling wine but mineral water run through a lemon sieve. And the attitude runs the range. Or, put another way again by their importer, “They [Scheuermann’s wines] go down so easy you’ll realize the bottle is gone after what feels like a glass.” It is lower alcohol in tandem with bright-but-balanced acidity that hypnotizes your palate. Only a decade on, the wines these brothers put out have shown improvement upon improvement – nowadays, what’s left to ask of their wines is only a question of style. Where do they go from something this good?

Rheinhessen-Pfalz, Germany. Sparkling Riesling from a biodynamic parcel rooted in sandstone and loess soil. The grapes go through primary fermentation in stainless steel and are then racked into a large tank to undergo the Charmat-Method for secondary fermentation (essentially, the wine becomes bubbly in tank / before bottling). Aged for an additional 7 months sur lie and bottled unfined, unfiltered with no SO2.