Two Bottles Chardonnay by Vorgrimmler
We're drinking two bottles of Chardonnay from Weingut Vorgrimmler in Baden: the base level 2022 vintage and the Nemochet from 2021.
It’s a bit like a second New Year’s Eve here on the blog, because where kombucha and apples were taking turns the last weeks, grapes are now allowed to play first fiddle again. The wine year, or rather the wine drinker’s year 2025, is starting. And we’re starting it in Baden. Klaus and Maj Britt Vorgrimmler make wine in the southwest of the republic. More precisely in Munzingen, south of the Tuniberg, a stone’s throw from Freiburg. In fact, Munzingen, with its nearly 3000 inhabitants, has been a district of Freiburg since 1973. Unlike the volcanic soil layers on the Kaiserstuhl, limestone lies beneath the loess layer on the Tuniberg. The wine drinker’s reflex immediately shouts that this is just like in Burgundy and quite rare in Germany. And the wine drinker’s reflex is, of course, correct. The Vorgrimmlers have been growing wine on just over three hectares of these soils for more than 30 years. Organic from the start, Demeter-certified biodynamic since 2007, making them one of the first in the region for ecological viticulture. At the winery, perhaps really because of the soil, Burgundy varieties dominate the wine list. A few years ago, however, there were also a small number of bottles of Cabernet Blanc, which we discussed here as the 2018 vintage. Whether it still exists, I don’t know. At least I couldn’t find a current vintage. It would be a shame if it no longer existed, because I liked it very much and good Cabernet Blanc doesn’t grow on every vine. We also had the Chardonnay on the table back then, but it paired so well with the second bottle today that it’s allowed to appear again as the 2022 vintage. It’s fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks. The big brother with the cat on the label is also a pure Chardonnay, but unlike the base wine, it was aged for two years in small oak barrels.
The Chardonnay, with only Chardonnay on the label, smells finely creamy with a mix of slightly yellow fruit and green apple. Like the 2018 vintage, this bottle also needs a few moments to get going. With air, it slowly becomes spicier, and from the first sip, there’s real pull on the tongue. There’s an enormous amount of green apple, which makes it extremely juicy. I wouldn’t have expected that from the smell again, but that happens all the time. Behind the apple follows a brief nutty note, which is then caught again by the acidity. This is really fun.
Overnight, the wine becomes clearer in fruit and even spicier. Somewhere it now takes on structure that was missing on the first evening. The apple seems a bit riper now, not quite as green, almost sweet at times and noticeably mellower. A touch of creaminess has developed and it smells a little bit like butter cookies. And today I’m sure it’s the wine, because the Christmas baking is weeks behind us after all. I like it a lot.
The Chardonnay with the cat on the label doesn’t need to take a moment. There’s real smoke in the nose, you can feel the wood and the fruit is simultaneously more intense and seems much riper when smelling. That must be the wood as well, because 2021 should have been a bit cooler and fresher on the Tuniberg than 2022. And of course, there’s wood when drinking too, but at no point does it give the impression that it might not belong there or is still waiting for the right integration. It all fits together. There’s also a bit of creaminess and the yellow fruit. It’s longer than the simpler Chardonnay, deeper, spicier, but in direct comparison, it lacks the playful lightness that the other wine simply brings. When drinking in parallel, this initially leads to a tendency, at least for us, to give preference to the plain Chardonnay, which then changes with each further sip. Nemochet builds more tension each time you drink and you really drink yourself into it, and at some point it actually takes the lead.
Overnight, however, not much changes. It smells and tastes relatively unchanged. Maybe a tad gentler, a bit closer together now, but in principle, you could type every word from the first evening again. The wood has perhaps taken half a step back and given some black tea room. But this doesn’t change the structure on the tongue one bit. The duel between the two wines, by the way, is unchanged. You have to drink your way into the two years of oak barrel aging, you prefer the nameless wine at first, but then, yes then comes Nemochet.