Kurt Darting

The numero uno sales success story in my portfolio. Extraordinary VALUE FOR MONEY for superbly made reductively brilliant wines. Great 2001s. Depending on the vintage, either spicy-gingery and firmly bracing, or flowery-polleny with a candied spice and more talc and malt. Basically reductive, as indicated above, yet with the acquisition of certain Grand Cru sites purchased from Basserman Jordan, one sees how classical Darting’s wines can be from outstanding vineyards. All wines intensely, fundamentally varietal. They’re kind of like rookie Catoirs (I know tasters who prefer them, but I wouldn’t go quite that far) with a frisky mischievous charm.

•Vineyard area: 17 hectares
•Annual production: 12,500 cases
•Top sites: Dürkheimer Michelsberg, Spielberg and Hochbenn, Ungsteiner Herrenberg
•Soil types: Heavy chalky loam, sandy gravel, loess and loam
•Grape varieties: 44% Riesling, 8% Weissburgunder, 6% Rieslaner, 5% Scheurebe,
4 % each of Portugieser, Muskateller and Ortega, 3% each of Chardonnay andSpätburgunder, 19% other varieties