The Baden wine district stretches 400 kilometres in a north/south direction along the border with France all the way down to Lake Constance. The most famous of the areas in Baden is the Kaiserstuhl, which is among the warmest and sunniest in Germany. This is home to some of the most famous spätburgunder wines in the country. The warm climate here means that the wines are often fuller and stronger than further north.
Producers in this episode:
- Franz Keller, Oberbergen
- Bernhard Huber, Malterdingen
This is part of a series on German wines, and above all a selection of quality German producers in five wine regions in Germany. This is the result of BKWine’s reporter Göran van den Brink’s big German tour in the summer of 2024, in six parts:
The most prestigious wineries are probably Bernhard Huber and Franz Keller. They make monumental wines and the prices are accordingly. Huber’s top wine Wildenstein costs €160 and Franz Keller’s top wine Steinriese costs €125. Although, compared to Burgundy, it is still cheap.
Personally, however, I prefer the mid-range wines from Baden. Like for example Huber Alte Reben and Franz Keller’s Aschkarren Ortswein, they are a bit leaner, fruitier and not as oak-dominated and cost a quarter. 2022 was a year of perfect weather conditions in the area and all the wines we tried were incredibly good.
Franz Keller, Oberbergen
The wines from Franz Keller are instantly recognizable in a blind tasting, they have an unmistakable tone from the terroir where they were grown. The vineyards and winery are located in the middle of an old volcano, and you can clearly feel that in both aroma and taste.
The modern winery is embedded in the mountain and consists of several levels. The grapes enter the top floor and only gravity moves the wines downwards during production. The company is run by Fritz Keller and his son Friedrich. Fritz was the one who showed us around and told us about the wines. Since Friedrich Keller took over more of the responsibility, the wines have become more refined, more elegant and clearly more Burgundian in their expression from year to year.
That they are extremely careful with all details and uncompromising is evident when Fritz talks about how the harvest is done: “We cannot increase the harvest staff as fast as we like, all our harvest workers must be able to feel and taste the grapes that they are of the right quality for our wines, it’s not something you learn in half an hour”. They harvest relatively early because they do not want overripe and thus clumsy wines, but strive for finesse. Despite the warmest climate in Germany, even the top wines do not exceed 12.5% alcohol, a deliberate choice.
Franz Keller also runs a one-star restaurant in the Oberbergen, Schwarzer Adler, where you can taste older vintages of the area’s wines with first-class food. Of course, Fritz Keller arranged for an extra table at the fully booked restaurant and greeted us when we got there in the evening. Incidentally, this is written with an Oberbergener Bassgeige Erstes Gewächs 2019 in the glass, you can tell by the long pauses between each sentence. Perfect match!
Bernhard Huber, Malterdingen
Barbara & Bernhard Huber started making wines under their own name as late as 1987. Before that they let the cooperative take care of the grapes. In such a short time, the winery has been brought to the absolute top in Germany, when it comes to spätburgunder.
Spätburgunder has been grown in Malterdingen for over 700 years thanks to the Franciscan monks who noted that it was the same soil as in many places in Burgundy, mussel lime. So Malterdingen has almost become synonymous with spätburgunder.
Since the son Julian took over the responsibility about ten years ago, the quality has been raised even further. Bernhard Huber’s philosophy was from the very beginning to allow all wines to ferment slowly and completely and to give them a long aging time on the lees in order to bottle them unfiltered after barrel aging in used oak barrels.
The top locations are Schlossberg and Wildenstein, but even their Ortswein Malterdingen Alte Reben Spätburgunder is magically good and beats any wine from Burgundy, in the same price range, hands down.
About 2022, Barbara Huber says: “It was an almost perfect year and we are very proud of our entire collection”. It is an exciting story when Barbara tells about how she and her husband did not think that the cooperative was making the best of their fine vineyard locations anymore and how they started to make their own wine on a small scale with high quality ambitions right from the start.
Read the next episode in the series here: Pfalz.
Read the previous episode here: Nahe.
