display

Yes, unfortunately: words that begin with quer are somehow discredited in these times.

So also the lateral thinking career changer in viticulture, as I used to be.

The outsiders among the winemakers are responsible for a number of excellent wines, such as the pop star Sting (Tuscany) or Dieter Meier from the Swiss electro-pop duo Yello (Argentina).

But it doesn't have to be bards and old hipsters, many ex-bankers and CEOs with plenty of money also look for a piece of vineyard after the end of their corporate career that should make them happy.

When it comes to pressing, an employed oenologist usually has the say, because the wine skills of most career changers - like good wine - only mature enough after a few years that they can get rid of these experts.

But what you can say with certainty: The wines of the lateral entrant Gérard Depardieu are all big crap.

The photographer Andreas Durst is also a career changer, but comes to completely different results.

With an area of ​​0.6 hectares, his vineyard in the Palatinate appears almost ridiculously small.

He presses 5,000 to 6,000 bottles a year and hardly leaves out any German grape variety.

A wine package from Durst includes Riesling, Silvaner (which he writes “Sylvaner” in Austrian), plus Pinot noir, Chardonnay and Blauer Portugieser.

Only Gutedel, Lemberger and Scheurebe are missing, but if thirst gets hungry for these varieties, then it will also be made from these wines - that much is certain.

display

Andreas Durst is free on top.

He does not think like a conventional winemaker, doesn’t follow any of the new wine fashions that are difficult to reinterpret as modern;

he doesn't even behave like a winemaker seeking applause for a scene.

He gets all of his reading material biologically clear without making it a priority.

The grapes that he buys for his base wines may sometimes come from machine harvest - a sacrilege for natural wine fans!

That's not how you make friends

Durst says that he hardly sulphurizes or filters his wines because he instinctively manages to manage them in a way that many German winegrowers - and that is no longer saying thirst, but I - don't even come close: committed to a singularity and size.

Durst says he hardly understands that others can so rarely.

And of course: That's not how you make friends.

Especially not as a career changer.

All of Andreas Durst's wines have a grandiose coolness, a work towards delicacy and subtlety;

pressing out the salts from the soil, integrating the fruit without making it too happy.

His Sylvaner “AAA” from 2017 is one of the five best Silvaners in Germany for me;

his Chardonnay from 2017, matured in heavily used but still flavorful barriques, withstands many Bourgogne blancs.

Typically German wines are not, international wines certainly.

display

A highlight is his Portuguese made from 110-year-old vines, a wine that must be drunk cool like Alsatian pinot noirs;

also a wine that gives this variety, which is mostly rightly branded as rustic, the strength it can inherit - provided it is made from old vines.

So 5,000 to 6,000 bottles a year, around half of them, says Durst, are exported - for example to a renowned dealer in New York.

The bottles remaining in Germany go away more slowly.

Why?

Good question.

This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG.

We will be happy to deliver them to your home on a regular basis.

Source: Welt am Sonntag