‘Neither my father nor I ever planted a white vine’, says Alexander Stodden proudly. Stoddens have been making wine since the 16th century, and at Jean Stodden it’s all about Spatburgunder. With the magical combination of steep slopes, low yields and some very old vines, Alexander is able to craft exquisite Pinot Noir from the terraced slopes of the Ahr Valley, in the village of Rech, just south of Bonn. His smallest plot is 12 square metres. Farming is sustainable, as organic as possible. He racks his wines every three months as he strongly believes that Pinot Noir should be raised oxidatively and not reductively. His goal is to produce ‘rich and concentrated wines of great freshness and finesse’, and his top bottlings joust easily with the very best of Burgundy.

While the classic Spatburgunder comes from mostly lower-lying sites, JS is a steep-site selection. Rech is a village bottling (‘my Gevrey-Chambertin’, says Alexander), from his home village where his best sites cluster. His single most emblematic site is on the Grosses Lage (‘great site’) Herrenberg, a 60-degree slope where old and ungrafted vines cling to the weathered slate. Stodden’s Herrenberg Grosses Gewachs is always profound, a true grand cru bottling. (NT 11/08/25)