Personalities

August Kesseler: the art of working with Pinot Noir
«Magnum» №10(12) 2006

What was there to expect from a professional tasting hosted by 200 German winemaking estates?

Naturally, hundreds and hundreds of bottles of Riesling and other white varieties. The more staggering was Eleonora Scholes’ discovery of red wines which were presented by August Kesseler, a winemaker from Rheingau. Later on our correspondent found out that Kesseler’s Pinot Noir is in big demand with lovers of great red Burgundies.

– The place where the vineyards come from has a long history of growing Pinot Noir. It is called Assmannshausen and lies very next to the Rhine River. The slopes are facing south-west; the soils are 100% slate. Around twelve hundred years ago French monks brought the original Pinot Noir clones to the Rheingau valley. It had happened before Riesling arrived to this area! The monks selected ideal plots for growing it in Assmannshausen. The vines were famous clones from Clos de Vougeot. Only four estates in the world have kept them — Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Henry Jayer, Marquis d’Angerville in Burgundy and August Kesseler in Rheingau. It is a very sensitive grape — with small bunches, very thin skin, lighter in colour but brilliant.

I remember well when I was a boy and my father took me to the vineyards. It was in the sixties and the seventies. You need to remember that after World War II nearly all products were sweet — people wanted to enjoy things they missed during the war. Unfortunately, my parents passed away early. I was 15 when my mother died and two years later my father passed away. I took over a very small winery with the style of wine typical for that period. There was no malolactic fermentation (a very important process to make red wine smooth) and high acidity was balanced off with residual sugar by adding grape juice. That was the situation in 1977.

I started to read books and notes left by my grandfather in order to learn about malolactic fermentation and make wine of a totally different style which reminded me of older samples of ‘45, ‘47 and ’53 vintages. I didn’t have the knowledge about the technique of how handle the fruit and structure, but it was the first step towards that style of Pinot Noir Assmannshausen got famous for over centuries already. In 1978 I got a customer ready to buy a ‘new’ wine and I ran first malolactic fermentation. The wine had some residual sugar, but much less than the wines my father produced.

– The wine was accepted by a totally different circle of clients. Pinot Noir, like red wine in general, had no image in restaurant business. Restaurant owners got excited about the new style and said, “This is probably a kind of red wine which can match food and the image of our establishments. Let’s see what this guy will do in the next few years”. Thus I started to produce dry Pinot Noir wines. At the beginning I did not have enough experience, but we improved a lot over the years and found back that old style of Assmannshausen which was as successful as great Burgundies. We are still focusing our work on that fine, feminine, elegant kind of Pinot Noir the world is now very appreciative of.

– Pinot Noir is still a grape variety that needs a lot of understanding. Neophytes are looking for a direct impact of red wine — intense colour, rich flavours, sweet fruit, good body. Such wine is easier to understand. When they become more knowledgeable, people look for blends — be it Bordeaux, Italy or New World. After a while people are thinking about Pinot Noir which is totally different, more elegant, not as easy to understand and they pay attention to it. You can find a lot of people who are interested in Pinot Noir but they need to learn.

Sideways seriously increased interest to the grape in the USA, but this attention is also important for us as we sell not only in Germany but worldwide. The Americans are looking for Pinot Noir but they don’t really know what Pinot Noir is. Wine from the New World is rich, with wide shoulders, not refined and delightful. When consumer tastes the first style, he gets excited about it.

My product doesn’t come cheap. It’s a wonderful terroir, but it’s difficult to work. Everything needs to be done by hand. The vineyards are steep. Luckily, the soils are well draining. We never get a problem with botrytis, the worst enemy of grape skins. But Pinot Noir is hard to grow and very hard to select. I have to keep very little yields, even lower than in Burgundy, to get a texture similar to Burgundy, but aromas and flavours totally different and unique.

– Slate means sour. It means low pH and high acidity. We have a cooler-climate growing season, but slate soils give perfect physiological ripeness of the grapes, taste of the fruit and acidity we need to provide for wine’s longevity and refinement.

– Yes. All three wines — from basic Spatburgunder to Cuvee Max and Assmannshauser Hollenberg come from Assmannshausen. Vineyards are next to the Rhine river, facing south-west, on the slate. The difference is in the age of the vines. For Spatburgunder the average age of vines is 30 to 55 years. Cuvee Max dedicated to my genius winemaker Max Himstedt stands for 55-75 year old vines. And when we designate the vineyard site Assmannshauser Hollenberg and show it on the label, the vines are 75 to 100 years old. All three are similar in style, the difference comes from the age of the vines and different pruning techniques. We are pruning twice — firstly, after blooming and secondly we are doing a green harvest when grapes enter the ripening phase. The yield for Spatburgunder is around 40 hl/ha, for Cuvee Max — 28-35, Assmannshauser Hollenberg is always around 20 hl/ha.

We also have another wine from the same clones, but the vineyard is around the corner and facing south. It is called Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg. The soil has quartz on slate and sandy lime, and there is always a slight breeze from the west. Sandy lime stands for more mineralization and bigger fruit which is worse for texture. You need to run a higher crop over the growing season. Due to that slight breeze excess water is dried so in the end the yield is always around 20 hl or less. Same variety, different terroir, different technique of pruning and different age of vines — and this is all very important.

– I have two. Doriano Pozetta is from Piedmont. He is a kind of a straight worker. Another one is Max Himstedt. Every winemaker has, of course, to be a little bit crazy, but Max is the craziest of all. He’s thinking only of quality and doing things you will not believe. He is working on single barrels, he is working on bringing barrels together in a blend, he is blending the blend… He’s getting ideas, ideas and ideas. He is unbelievably smart. When he was in the university, his professor said, ‘Mr Himstedt, you already know everything”.

Max originally comes from Bremen, a famous beer centre in the northern part of Germany. He studied chemistry at the university and was then already much interested in wine. He came to Rheingau in 1989 and started to work at Schloss Johannisberg, but left after 3 months as he had difference of opinion with the estate’s winemaker. Thus Max came to us. I don’t have children, but I believe that one day he will run the winery.

– If you come from Pinot background, you can understand any white grape variety much better. The opposite is also true — if you first come from Riesling or any white variety, it’s hard to understand red winemaking. If you are familiar with growing red wine, you are familiar how to handle a vineyard to bring healthy fruits only. Thanks to Pinot Noir we learnt to manage Riesling — that’s the reason why our Rieslings are so clean and bright.