Region: Germany - Pfalz
Grapes: Pinot Noir
Alcohol: 13.5%
Notes on the Wine
This is an incredibly drinkable, lovely Pinot with sweet fruit and exceptional minerality. Year after year, Becker's basic Pinot is a a light to medium bodied wine with rich, delicious flavor.
Notes on the Wine
The family owns more than 30 hectare and produces over 12,000 cases annually. Positioned on the very border with France in the town of Schweigen, the Beckers have witnessed that border shifting throughout history. Today, they have vineyards on both the French and German side, at the edge of the Palatinate forest—with 50 percent of their land situated on the French side in Alsace.
The soils in the area are composed of deep layers of shell limestone, with various topsoils, which in combination with the region’s mild climate, provide the ideal growing conditions for Spätburgunder. Hence, the logical focus on the variety. As one of the pioneers, Fritz Becker Sr. was also one of the first winemakers in the region to mature his Spätburgunder in barriques.
Their most prestigious vineyard is Kammerberg, a steep single vineyard on deep marl and limestone near Wissembourg, recovered by Fritz Sr. in 1967 . The old vines with mostly German clones and some French grow on deep marl lime soils that produce powerful but also refined, mineral-driven Pinot Noirs (it is all about the dirt here!); St. Paul cultivated in the 14th-century by the Cistercians of Wissembourg, which had since become overgrown but the Beckers uprooted trees and bushes in early 2000 and planted Spätburgunder; and Sonnenberg, with poor limestone soils ideal for growing Riesling.
