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About the Wine
A fascinating micro-cuvée of a meagre 300-bottle production, all coming from one single vineyard planted with the Roter Traminer varietal. It's a tiny parcel that Martin has essentially let grow wild, with no ploughing and minimal pruning. It's an experiment in helping the vines to develop their own natural resilience in this setting of biodiversity.
Much like its sibling Gewurztraminer, the Roter strain gives off beautiful floral aromatics, but in a far more delicate, detailed and nuanced way. The scent of rose petals but with nothing cloying or overdone. This sense of restraint follows in to the wine too - a well-defined, chiselled feel, with fine tannic framework. The grapes were destemmed and fermented on the skins for 5 days before being pressed into old german oak for 9 months of ageing before bottling with no additions. A wine with fantastic sense of place, intrigue and originality.
About Martin Hirsch
After nearly a decade living in Frankfurt, working in media and pouring wine at restaurant Emma Metzler on the side, Martin Hirsch returned home to Römerhof — a sleepy village in the north of Bavaria, and the family home for many years. His father made wine of the more conventional variety here, but it was at the restaurant that he had his first encounter natural wine — that special moment where the penny dropped and, as many who have shared the epiphany will attest, shifted his understanding of what wine could be.
It was the pandemic that sent Martin on the journey home as Frankfurt locked down. “When I stood in the vineyard after so many years in the city again, I felt like on LSD” he explains. “A spider descended from me, a deer ran through the lines – there was so much life, and that felt very good in that moment”. The pull of the land proved strong and it was around that time, with his father stepping away from winemaking, that Martin decided it could be possible to make wine of his own.
After a short internship with Franz Weninger over in Burgenland, He now farms a tiny 2.5 hectares of old vines around Kitzingen, planted over limestone and keuper – the mineral-rich sedimentary soil of the region that is a sort of hybrid of marl, clay and sandstone. In a part of Germany known for its long ripening season and scorching hot summers, this cooling earth provides balance and helps to preserve the bright, cleansing acids in the wine. Practising organics, he works with Dornfelder, Domina, Traminer, Ruländer (Pinot Gris) and of course the grape the region is best known for, Sylvaner.
In the cellar — a cool, old space beside the family home, previously used by his father — things are as pared-back as possible. Grapes are crushed by foot or direct pressed then fermented and aged in steel or old barrels for just short of one year before bottling. Not wanting to run before he could walk, Martin added just 10mg/l of sulphur to one of his debut vintage 2022 wines. For 2023 he has used nothing at all, getting closer to the essence of those wines that inspired him to begin.
For the most part, Martin learned by doing and now works among a small but growing group of like-minded young winemakers around Kitzingen. As is often the way with scenes like this that grow and develop in less prestigious wine regions, it’s an encouraging, collaborative community. Franconia is certainly a region to keep an eye on, and Martin is one of the new generation coming up.