Hueberberg

Hueberberg has been a wine growing site since medieval times, an old, rounded hill on a spur of the Alpstein terraced back in 1982. Philipp Grob farms 42 ares of Pinot Noir and 13 ares of Müller Thurgau here, on calcareous soil that gives the fruit a crunchy minerality and earthiness he likes to compare to a good wine from Graubünden. The site sits right on the Steinach river, near the spot where the monk Gallus is said to have stumbled and met his bear back in the year 612, and Grob ages his wine in a cool cellar built directly into the rock nearby.

As with every site he farms, Grob applies the same hands off method here, spontaneous fermentation, roughly a year in barrique, no fining, no filtration, no added sulphur. He describes his own approach in typically direct fashion, joking that his five year old daughter declared this Pinot Noir a must have, so he finally made enough of it.

The result is cherry driven and structured, carrying real minerality and a savoury, forest floor undertone, framed by fine tannins and good length. It stands as one of the more serious, food friendly reds in Grob's range, built for a proper meal rather than a quick pour.