Beurer wine estate, Württemberg

Jochen Beurer, a trained viticultural technician, began making wine in 1997 as a garage winemaker together with his father Siegfried and wife Marion in Kernen-Stetten, Swabia. Initially conventional growers, the Beurers began experimenting with organic farming methods in 2003. Jochen Beurer has since committed himself entirely to biodynamics: he uses horn-manure preparations, prunes only during the waning moon and works without cultured yeasts in the cellar. He is firmly convinced that this benefits his wines. With good reason: Beurer wines can be found in top restaurants throughout the country. Riesling is the focus, occupying six of the estate’s ten hectares. The sandstone around the area’s landmark, the imposing Y-Burg – pronounced I-Burg – gives the wines their characteristic slightly salty, mineral note.

Beurer’s museum vineyard shows how much the winegrower values tradition alongside natural authenticity. Here he revives ancient varieties such as Heunisch, Putzschere, Kleinweiss, Honigler and Gelber Orléans. Quality, he says, always comes from the vineyard. And when it is combined with controlled non-intervention in the Beurer style guarantees powerful wines that impress with their purity, minerality, vitality, tension, complexity and expression.