Cuvée No. 103 Sekt Brut Nature

Purism as a guiding principle: this sparkling wine goes into the bottle without dosage, without sulphur and without fining. What remains is Riesling in its most taut form, carried by drive, acidity and the yeasty spice from long ageing.

The vines grow on limestone and variegated sandstone in the Mittelhaardt, with the estate based in Gimmeldingen. Cool nights, with air flowing down from the Palatinate Forest, preserve the grapes' acid freshness. The house was founded in 2019, when Steffen Christmann took over twelve hectares and, together with his daughter Sophie Christmann and Mathieu Kauffmann, turned it into a project of its own.

The sparkling wine is made exclusively from Riesling. Grapes are hand-harvested into 8-kilo crates, with no more than thirteen minutes passing from grape to press. Spontaneous fermentation in large oak casks follows, along with at least 31 months on the lees, before disgorgement without dosage.

Lemon yellow in the glass, with a fine perlage. On the nose, green apple, lemon zest and chalky minerality. The palate opens bone-dry and linear, the acidity vibrates, and the creamy mousse carries the wine far into a long finish.

As an aperitif, or at the table with oysters, scallops and sashimi, as well as crayfish tempura or lightly aged raw-milk cheese.

Christmann & Kauffmann is Germany's first fully biodynamic sparkling wine estate and works according to respekt-BIODYN guidelines. The numbering follows a clear logic: all wines in the 100 series are single-varietal Rieslings, with the final digit recording the disgorgement.