Two Bottles Kertelreiter
We’re starting the new year, as in recent years, with a little less alcohol in the glass. In this case, that means two bottles of fruit sparkling wine from Kertelreiter: Schefflenzer Edelmost and Galaxy Rise, a dry-hopped cider.
January serves as a recovery period for many from the feasting of the year-end holidays. Whether it’s abstaining from meat or alcohol, restraint seems to be a popular way to start the new year. And even independent of possible good resolutions, alcohol-free alternatives to wine are seen more and more often. For beer, this is old news, but for grape-based drinks, alternative usually means with bubbles and unfortunately, very often it also means that it’s not really tasty. This is mainly because something has to carry such a drink and when the alcohol is removed, it’s often replaced by sugar, and sticky-sweet fruit soda with triple-digit residual sugar is simply not good in my opinion. Nevertheless, we try what comes our way and I’m using this January again to present what we’ve discovered in the process. They do exist, the not-terrible alternatives. Sometimes completely without alcohol, sometimes with less. Because fruit sparkling wines aren’t suitable for a completely dry January, but with just over 6 percent, the two bottles today are at least significantly lighter than typical sparkling wine, and fermented fruit in general is an extremely exciting topic. From recent personal experience, I can also report that such a bottle of cider is excellent for toasting to the new year.
In the course of this introduction, I’m frantically trying to remember where I first encountered Barry Masterson, or rather Kertelreiter. I think it was in a short documentary on YouTube (in German). We manage a few scattered fruit trees ourselves, and it’s inevitable, at least for me, to fall down the rabbit hole. First on the topic of tree pruning and then, when the harvest allows, also on the topic of what to do with the fruit. And somewhere there, the algorithm then slipped Kertelreiter to me. I had then, as it happens, forgotten about it again when a bottle of pear wine appeared in Christoph Raffelt’s Insta feed. An “I know that” and an “I wanted to shop there once” later, six bottles were on their way here. By the way, Christoph also had a wonderful conversation with Barry as part of his Originalverkorkt Podcast (also only available in German). It’s worth listening to.
Barry Masterson is a native Irishman (and maybe a bit crazy since he fills bottle editions of significantly less than 100 bottles) who ended up in the village of Schefflenz in Baden-Württemberg for love. Baden to be precise, at least if you can trust the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg. He’s a part-time fruit farmer who once started with apple juice production for personal consumption, then made cider and finally developed a love for cider pears and the perry made from them. Scattered fruit meadows are part of the landscape here in the state, old, large pear trees are really landscape-defining and unfortunately many of these meadows and trees are decaying. To put a stop to this, Barry is now planting new stocks with the support of pear sponsorships. From the harvest of the already existing stocks, he produces, depending on the year, harvest and mood, a gigantic variety of different fruit wines. There are single-variety mini-batches from partly unidentified pear trees, experiments with different yeasts, experiments with herbs, with tea, with hops, from old apple varieties, old pear varieties or even with quince. As much as I love wine, the connection to orchard fruit trees is even closer to me. Preserving the meadows, preserving old varieties and also replanting them, I understand that, I totally feel it. And also the “making something out of it” is easier to understand when you’ve stood at the basket press yourself. Unfortunately, the last two years were ass, so we’re still living off the last remnants of pressure barrel must from 2022. Maybe this year again. The closeness to the drink is different anyway. And indeed, since last year, a cider pear is growing again in our meadow too. Palmischbirne, Slowfood Ark passenger, because it has become rare. Hopefully it will grow well.
Thankfully, you can order a mixed case from Barry. That makes choosing easier. We’re trying two bottles from it now. The Schefflenzer Edelmost is a cuvée of 70% apple and 30% pear in the tradition of the classic, local must and nine months of lees aging. There are 186 bottles of it. The Galaxy Rise is a cuvée of three quarters Golden Pearmain, Cox Orange and Jonagold and a quarter cider pear. It’s spontaneously fermented, rests on the lees for 19 months and is then dry-hopped with Galaxy hops. There are only 62 bottles, ours is number 22. How crazy it is to produce such editions doesn’t need to be said again.
The Edelmost smells, of course, of must, appley, a bit rustic and somehow also with sweetness in between and a creamy, yellow note that might come from the pear content. There’s not much creaminess left when drinking. It has enormous pull and power. There’s structure, it’s bone dry, completely clear and juicy at the same time. The tension between what you smell and the uncompromising pull when drinking is really fun. This radiant clarity and the power and energy when drinking, by the way, runs through all the pear and apple sparkling wines that we then pulled out of the box from Kertelreiter. I’ve hardly had any cider from England or Ireland in my glass so far, but especially compared to what we otherwise drink from Normandy and Co, it’s quite a difference. There’s more oomph behind it here.
I generally like hops in apple bubbles. So it’s little surprise that I also find this one quite great. The Galaxy is quite green and quite hoppy in the nose. However, the green is green in a completely different way than it occurs in Sauvignon Blanc, for example. It doesn’t remind me of bell pepper at all. And it’s also a bit different than in dry-hopped IPA. Where the IPA often marches directly towards lychee and exoticism, we stay more hoppy spicy here. Sure, there’s also passion fruit and citrus fruit, but somehow more balanced than I’m used to from many IPAs. However, it’s been quite a while since I had my last IPA in the glass. Behind that comes something musty pome fruit in the nose, which you taste much more than you would smell it. I really like this and I’m really glad that it was washed back into my timeline via Christoph and thus jumped back into memory. I believe that especially here in the region, there’s still an extreme potential for exciting projects from the scattered fruit meadows. Lots to discover.