One Bottle Three Questions - A Wine Podcast
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One Bottle Three Questions - A Wine Podcast
#3 - 2021 Hallgartener Hendelberg, Weingut Peter Jacob Kuhn with Peter Bernhard Kuhn
The winery Peter Jacob Kuhn is famed for being one of the top producers in Rheingau and a pioneer of biodynamics. In this episode Peter Bernhard Kuhn gives a rare interview where he discusses the 'new' great sites like the Hendelberg, how compost became a serious business and the importance of texture in Riesling through skin contact.
Nelson - Hello and welcome to a bottle and three questions with me, Nelson Pari and Mike Best, Master of Wine. Today we're drinking the 2021 Hallgartener Hendelberg from Peter Jakob Kuhn with Peter Bernhard Kuhn. Let's start right away with question number one Mike.
Mike - Okay, so hello Peter. And I'd like to ask a question about the Hendelberg, one of the highest elevation vineyards in the Rheingau, almost 300 meters. This altitude was not historically an advantage in the previous centuries, but how has your approach to vineyard sites changed with climate change? And are the great vineyards of the world still the great vineyards? What's your opinion on this?
Peter - It's true that when we started to work in the Hendelberg, that is now probably... Well, the first vintage was 2009 nobody was interested in the Hendelberg because it was too high up. Uh, in average was, uh, not the easiest thing to reach the good balance of maturity that you were aiming for. But of course, especially during the last probably eight, nine years, uh, more consistently, the date of harvest became more and more early and, we saw. the vintages in Hendelberg to be very consistent, good quality. And so it's definitely something that was, in a way, not surprising. So it was also part of the idea to move a little bit into the heights, giving all the prognosis made for the climatic changes. And on the other hand, I have to say that... This doesn't mean at the same side that the vineyards that have been also historically of great classification and great renaming now would lose some of their value because it's just a different approach in terms of many things that you do have to take into consideration when you are working on the vineyards. We can actually do a lot to try and slow down maturity to create the... different vigor and dynamic in the warmer sides and at the same time take different steps in the workflow for the vineyards in the Hendelberg that we know we have to maybe stimulate the vegetation a little bit to get them to where we want them after the growing season when it comes to picking. It's not a one-way road, it's a thing, it's a development that comes as the sum of many small pieces.
Mike - And why was it in 2009 that you and your father believed in that as a great site?
Peter - The answer becomes very obvious when you are here, because it is a hill that shapes like, it's like when you have the forest on top of the mountains that are called the Taunus that are protecting us in the north, the Hendelberg is rolling out of that forest line, having a steep slope, 44% of steepness and you walk around there, you see the soil, you immediately sense there is a good place for a vineyard. I mean, there have been vineyards, but they have to be more or less kissed away, I would say. You have to put life into the soil, you have to put care for your plants, and then it was very obvious that it was a good place to be, actually. That was... partly instinct, partly reason, partly very obvious.
Nelson - How does the soil composition, temperature variation and taste profile of the wines from this vineyard differ from all the others where you bottle as a single vineyard?
Peter - It's for us a big, big thing because when we started to work in Hendelberg, it's completely different from what we were... normally working in with the vineyards in Mittelrhein close to the river Oim-Östfisch, where we have the middle bank of the, like of the middle Rheingau with very fertile and generous soils coming from red and white quartzite, so powerful. When we came to the Hendelberg, we had the soil there is coming from fully slate and the soil color is more or less like a pale gray, almost whitish in a way. So the nutrients are quite poor actually. So when we would put vegetables in there to grow, I think we would really have a hard time to be happy. But for the Riesling, it's a good place to be. And I'm always trying to stay away from speaking in generalities, but what we find, the change that this soil, this situation, is giving to the wines, is a great luminosity. The grapes already are always full of bright, very light, yellowish coloring. Also, I'm not talking about actual colours, but I'm talking about the colour that you feel when you taste the wine or when you taste the grape. It's very yellow, it's uplifting, it's more spheric than the very terrestrial. soil-bound characters of the vineyards that are lower closer to the river.
Mike - Is there anything which is specific to the viticulture in the Händelberg versus other sites that you do in order to achieve the ripeness in this cooler climate or this higher altitude?
Peter - The answer to the question is probably that I don't really have one every year approach to the viticultural changes that we or the decisions that we take. It's always a bond very strongly to the situation that the year is giving us. In general, also something that we are not trying to change. We are not trying to push the vineyard to be ripe earlier necessarily, because it's not necessary. We are more trying to slow down the other vineyards closer to the river. And one strong thing that is a big part of how we try to approach viticulture in general is that there's this element of empathy with the vineyard. So you try to really create a partnership and be sensible for the needs of every parcel. And that starts by the compost for the soil, and continues of course with the pruning, like how you want to create wounds or avoid wounds. That continues with the canopy management. where you have the vertical shoot positioning, having the grapes in shadow in warm vintages, or if you need more air around them you have to defoliate. Decisions coming and going throughout the season, always trying to feel the momentum of the vintage, and then trying to also respect the natural instincts of the grape, or of the grapevine. as it is a plant that really, you know, it wants to climb, it wants to grow into the vertical. There is some things that come by the cultivating of the vine that is actually, you know, not very good for the vine. And there's always a question of finding the balance between natural and cultural impacts and giving the vine more room to grow in her natural way, accepting the vineyard maybe to look a little bit more wild. having the shoots grow over the wires and hang into the row or braiding them along the wire to allow the vine to really keep on growing. This all is something that we believe gives a certain quality to the grape. You could bring that down physiologically to the hormones that are created in certain parts of the vine, like in the top of the shoots, that will influence, like when you cut that, it will influence the growth of the grape berries. influence the growth of the summer shoots, so you will have a different canopy structure, it will become much more dense. You will have a different leaf-fruit ratio, so many, many different small things. But the most important, I think, or the, I would say, the starting point for us to take the decision to respect the vine a little bit more and not to hurt it too much, or as little as possible in many ways, that really comes from that. empathy approach, I would say, that we try to more or less take care of the plants and not only see them as something that we want to take grapes off.
Nelson - So is the Hendelberg a site that is easier or harder to work in general compared to the other sites? And is there any specific technique that involves canopy management, pruning that you use consistently every year in that specific site?
Peter - It is more work to work in the Hendelberg as it is steeper and so it's sometimes definitely more hand work necessary to bring it through the season. Every vineyard has special momentums throughout seasons, throughout the different vintages. Whenever we go to the Hendelberg also, maybe it's nice to see it like this. We are all a team of different people. We all wake up in the morning feeling more or less sour or feeling great, having a great day, having a great start in the day. So we stand, we come, we go to the handle bag and when you are standing in the vineyard like this in the morning, like at seven o'clock and the sun is rising, the birds are singing, it's a good thing. It's a good energy. You go into the vineyard regardless of what you're doing, if it's de-budding, if it's positioning the shoots, if it's defoliating, if it's... working underneath the vine to take out the herb a little bit or something. You go in there with a positive energy and that is I think that emotion that is something that the whole area is picking up. That's the important thing of also having a team that carries on with your ideas and that is part of you know it's not only work it's also about being there connecting really. This is a different thing when you're in the Hendelberg in a vineyard like this, with this atmosphere. Then for example, if you are in a more generic, more easy vineyard, you know, it's not harder, but it changes nevertheless. You know, there's something that you go a little bit more through and then something that you really soak up. And that's, you know, a good thing.
Nelson - The winery has been a certified demeter since 2004 and is highly recognized for the work that has been done through biodynamics in all Germany. Can you talk about the preparation and the use of the compost through biodynamic techniques?
Peter - It's a big part, probably the most important part of working biodynamic, I mean, apart from all the big pictures that you can create when you're talking about this topic. When it comes down to the practice, really building up compost, getting a feeling for how it works for you is taking the biggest place in our yearly biodynamic calendar, so to say. It's about creating a network of people around you that help you to get all the ingredients like cow manure, horse manure. Green cuts from the forest or from metals around you. You have to mix that together, you have to get a feeling of how the different ingredients have to be worked together and how wet it has to be, how hot it can be. Up to the guys that really hold the cows that give you the manure and maybe having some cows on some field. And then when we go more into the intimacy of the composting. fermentation, we talk about the biodynamic compost preparates like yarrow, like steaming nettle, like many of those beautiful small plants that grow around the area. If you open your eyes, then you can see them throughout the year. And that's also something important about the biodynamic things and the composting is that you more or less are broad. back to slow down and look around you, pay attention to what's growing and what's flowering when, take those flowers at the right moment and then they have to go through a certain fermentation process where we are more or less connecting the elements of the plant, of the soil and of the cosmos. And then after that fermentation process we have something that you could consider as a homoeopathic ingredient that is becoming part of the compost. to stimulate the rotting. And the idea is that if you have those stimulators, the composting process will be more, you know, like in our body. We as humans are a collective of different organs. We are also a collective of millions and trillions of microbes. And if we would not have the organs that kind of organise everything and keep it, you know, in a way, in a balanced way that we are capable of thinking and living. For me, the compost preparations and the biodynamic sense are giving that to the compost pile. So they structure, they organise the processes, they kind of moderate them and thereby give us a quality that is more than just a normal compost thing. That's one theoretical thing. For me, what counts for us is a lot of that element of paying attention to your nature, like being aware of what is growing, what is flowering, when that is connecting you to your land and that is enabling also you to understand a little bit better how everything is connected.
Nelson - I think it's really hard for people to understand how hard and how expensive it is to find great compost. How do you source yours?
Peter - We build it ourselves, so that is a process of, I think it would, I would summarise it would take about 10 years to create that network of having, you know, good relationships with farmers around you and also with the city councils that control what people are doing in nature. So it's a little bit, I don't know the right terms for it, but it's a little bit silly that when... Sometimes when you work organic it gets harder than if you would work conventional, the people control you much more. But the beautiful thing of building up a compost is that you really learn so much also personally about those different processes. And for us it was always the idea of having compost for ourselves that has been... at our place, going through the metamorphosis of coming from being manure, being this raw material to being that very lively black matter with all the information of the certain place. When you have a compost pile that is being prepared in a very, you can have compost that is practically very controlled. economically brought up, wherever here in Germany or in Europe you can buy that. It's fine, it will also have microbes, it will also have nutrients, but it doesn't have all the individual connections to the place where it has been set up. And here we are having compost that is lying on a field like in the middle of our vineyards. It experiences the sunshine of a year, it experiences the rain of a year, thereby it changes the dynamics of the rotting. If it's too warm, it will slow down. If it's too wet, it will slow down. And it takes up all this energy and thereby also, of course, creates an individual state of the place and state of the year of the composting flora and fauna and life profile that is then brought to our soils. So that is a connection and that's why we, you know, when we make compost, we don't do it with a lot of measurements where we go in and take a temperature and control temperature or control humidity. For us, it's important that it can go through those also theoretically, unfortunately, warm or dry phases. I think it's a natural product and it should be treated like one of these.
Nelson - How do you apply compost to the soil and does the application differ from side to side or is pretty much the same?
Peter - When we started with Biodynamics and when we started to have compost, we really embraced the idea of compost and the distribution is pretty much done by tractor and there is a trailer that has like two rolls that make the compost being thrown out. behind the trailer and you go with that through the vineyard and you create like a layer of compost like that is about three fingers thick, so maybe six, five to six centimetres. And then afterwards you would pass by ploughing it gently into the upper crust of the soil to bring it away from the sunlight so that the, you know, all the micro bacteria, they like to be covered by the soil. That is how we do it in most of the vineyards where we can do it with a tractor. If it's too steep, like in Hendelberg or in other parts, then we have to do it by like a backpack thing, like where we carry the grapes during picking and then we put it into the backpacks and then we throw it into the rows or then we use shovels and stuff and that's the practical side of things. And during the years, like after, when we started, I was talking about that we embraced the idea of compost a lot. We did that every year for every parcel. So we thought compost, live, good. And it probably was also good because it's such an enrichment for the soils when they have not experienced this, especially when we get some new plots from neighbours that have not been organic or so. We really use compost to get the vineyard to a natural dynamic again. what we saw and that's also part of all the process and all the... Like all the experience that we have done with biodynamics is in the beginning, when you are in love with biodynamics and with compost, you just, maybe you are a fool's rush. You think the more the better. At a certain point you have to realise that, or you relearn a little bit also, that's also part of the recognition that when you change from... conventional to biodynamic, your vineyard starts to change as well. And you have to be aware of those changes and you have to learn those changes. And then you have to reconsider how do I supply my vineyards with compost, which parcel needs a little bit more, which maybe needs a break. So now we have more or less much slower and like an average, we go every third year, we bring new compost into the vineyard. And in the meantime, we just leave it and respect more or less the dynamics that happened by itself in the vineyard. It has become much more individual now. In the beginning it was very, very common for us. There was a common thing, we wanted to bring compost everywhere every year. Now we differ much more precisely which parcel needs how much and when.
Mike - Let's talk about the wine now. Probably a good place to go next. So I wanted to ask you about the texture because it's got the classic Riesling bright acidity. It has this kind of yellow fruit character as you described earlier, but it has a roundness to the mouthfeel and some sort of phenolic grip in the texture, which balances that nicely, gives the wine more weight and complexity. So all of your wines, including the Hendelberg, undergo a short period of skin contact. How do you use this and your press in order to achieve this texture?
Peter - The skin contact is only on the press. We have a whole cluster pressing for all the wines. And this is a very gentle pressing procedure of about four to up to eight hours, considering the texture of the skins, the structure of the vintage, how... like maturity, pH and acidity, how it's connected. So, I don't do any pre-maceration or something else. I want to have this process on the press because I think that when you have the grape releasing the juice in a very slow way, you allow the must to find the balance of oxidation pick up the phenols and because it will take phenolics from the skins when you press this slow, but it will use a big part of those phenols to protect the mast from oxidation and what's left he wants to keep. So I would never, you know, in a way I don't want to dominate the mast to pick up more phenols than he might probably need. So I don't want to have a phenolic finding in a way. And... The result that the wine has this texture is more or less coming from these ideas that are all very much connected to giving freedom to the grape to express as pure as possible. I don't want to be a winemaker, I want to be a wine guide more or less. I pick the grape and we believe, or the fascination that lies within this work for us is to really have everything we can in the vineyard to create a grape that has a good quality and a good power in terms of vitality to be very independent after the moment that we cut it from the vine. So the grape is cut from the vine, it is put into small boxes, it is transported to the press, it is pressed gently and then after the pressing there is only one short you know, debourbage, the French say, so the next morning we rack it into the fermentation barrels, all traditional Rheingau barrels of 1200 to 3000 litres, and there they will ferment without any manipulation, so we don't correct anything. We believe that the natural composition is the most important thing to respect, to give the wine the independency and also the core to develop. great for the future, for the future years in the bottle. And so texture, structure, firmness, like how it's interwoven, that's all a result of giving the wine freedom and trust in the quality of the grape.
Mike - And what press do you have? What's the name of the press?
Peter - It's a EuroPress from Schafenberger. So it's a horizontal press. It's a closed press. So we have two, we have two different, one is quite small. and one is a little bit bigger and thereby we can really adopt the parcels that come in over the day to the presses. And it's actually, you know, harvest with us is a quite calm thing. We have more or less two or three presses per day. As everything is picked by hand, we can do much more and much quicker. So it's actually quite a chill thing. And I like the horizontal. press because I have the capacity to more or less work like in a vertical press. So I don't let the presses turn, I just bring in the grapes and then there is this membrane that I can blow up and it will come from the top and it will just increase the pressure slow by slow. And I don't turn and so the juice will really run down. very gently and you know, for me it's a combination of modern techniques and capabilities and historical things.
Nelson - I want to understand how did you get to this point? So what kind of press did you use previously? What changes have been made? And especially how long did it take to understand what was the best setting for the press?
Peter - The presses before were older presses. also of different companies. Before I joined there was also machine harvesting and different processing of the must and for some of the wines and it's difficult to say honestly. I think that the most important thing was actually that we changed and took the decision to pick everything by hand to be able to press. the grapes as whole clusters and give us a must that has very small, you know, solid sediments. And that avoids filtration of the must prior to fermentation and so on. So I think that was the decision that stood at the beginning of the changes. And I think it's actually, you know, which press we are working with is only a secondary thing. I don't think it's very important actually, especially nowadays where there's many... great presses that you can buy and I think you can have different presses giving you a great result. So we went at the time, it was a thing that, you know, has so many things, had strongly to do something with people that you know and that you get along with. So the guy that was bringing us to those presses, that was more or less selling them to us, he was just a friend, you know, he was a friend that happened to work with Scharfenberger presses. So it was him and the friendship with him more or less and the trust that brought us to swap more or less the old presses that were still from the 70s. We still have one of them for the sweet wines because they go up much higher in pressure, but to replace those presses with modern presses and that's how it came more or less. It was really a process of being friends with the guy. similar for the barrels as well. That's another part of that story. The barrels are all from Stockinger because there's a family friendship with the family and ever since that we are with them and at the time when it started we had no it could have equally been anybody else but it was a question of friendship.
Nelson - The three questions today were about the Hendelberg cru in Rheingau, compost in biodynamic agriculture and skin contact with Riesling. Thank you so much for listening and hopefully you have a chance soon to check out this extraordinary wine. And Peter, thanks for being with us today.
Peter - Thanks for having me.
