Dreissigacker quality levels

Estate wine, as the name suggests, refers to the estate itself. A winery usually owns several vineyards across different sites in the surrounding area, which need not all lie within one village. An estate wine may be made from all the grapes of one variety grown by the estate, without distinguishing which of its own parcels they come from. The flavour traits of individual sites, shaped for instance by higher or lower temperatures or by hours of sunshine, can be balanced against one another so that the result is a rounded, harmonious wine. Among the quality levels, the estate wine is particularly well suited to getting to know a winery, because estate wines represent it: they show its standard of quality and its specific character. The Dreissigacker estate wines are shaped by the variety of our sites in and around Bechtheim.

Village wine is the next quality level above estate wine. The origin of the grapes is narrowed, so individual characteristics come through more clearly in the taste. As with the estate wine, the selection of grapes gives the wine its name: a village wine draws on several sites, but all of them lie within the same village. That creates a clear link between the wine and where it comes from. Our Dreissigacker village wines ripen exclusively in the top sites of Bechtheim and Westhofen. The characteristic variety of the soils and the high degree of ripeness give the wines their particular expression.

Promising vines produce striking, high-quality fruit early on, after ten to fifteen years. For our single-vineyard wines those vines are still too young, but their aromas are already pronounced enough for something remarkable. Through severe yield reduction and concentration on few bunches, the young vines on the long-worked soils of Bechtheim bring forth fruit with a great deal of potential. The hand-picked grapes are aged precisely, blended and finally left to mature for several months. From young vines comes an innovative, singular, fine and consequential wine: a Wunderwerk in the truest sense.

The Dreissigacker Einzigacker is a genuine rarity. Jochen Dreissigacker devoted himself to ageing this Pinot Blanc and kept refining it until a singular wine emerged. A powerfully aged Pinot Blanc often needs a counterpart so as not to become too dominant, and Jochen Dreissigacker found an equal one in the tonneau. The Pinot Blanc matured for ten months in oak. The toasted notes of the tonneau give it exactly the nuances it needs to become truly distinctive. Einzigacker is the flavourful result of a compelling pairing of Pinot Blanc and oak.

The single-vineyard wine sits at the top of the quality levels. Here the focus is on ageing a wine from one single site. For our Dreissigacker single-vineyard Rieslings the grapes are picked selectively from the oldest and best vineyards only, and handled with care. The differing characters of the individual sites produce highly distinct wines. Ageing them demands absolute attention to detail, because everything turns on nuance. Every vintage, and every harvest within it, is different, which affects both the ageing and the taste. Small-lot ageing of single-vineyard wines is therefore particularly demanding. Here we rely on the quality of our vines, on our experience and on instinct. A vine must be at least 20 years old before it yields grapes for a single-vineyard wine; most of ours are 45 years and older. Planting new vines is a very long-term commitment for us. The Dreissigacker single-vineyard wines carry the particularities of their origin carefully in their aromatics and their maturity.