2022 Rings Estate Spätburgunder Pflaz 750 ml

If you haven’t been to Germany, you might not realize how good—and how popular—Pinot Noir has become in the Deutschland.

A half-century ago, German-grown Pinot was a curiosity. It was rare, and it was even more rarely good.

Now? The grape—called Spätburgunder in German—makes wines that rival top Burgundies at a fraction of the price, with a cool-climate floral snap and delicate earthiness. We’ve been turning to German Pinots more and more to scratch our old-world itch, and we were absolutely blown away when we tasted Rings Estate’s 2022.

Rings have become Pinot Noir superstars in their native Germany—winning a well-known Spätburgunder shootout two years in a row in some of the first vintages with the brothers at the helm. They’ve gone from strength to strength since, and Andreas is still mind-bogglingly young for a winemaker of his renown: He’s yet to enter his fourth decade of life.

Rings is based in the Pfalz, which is one of the warmest wine-growing regions in Germany and Pinot Noir benefits immensely from the ripeness that the Pfalz can provide—not a given in a cold-climate country. Rings works organically in their vineyards, which are estate-managed and painstakingly farmed, with diversified cover crops and precision shoot-thinning.

The 2022 Rings Estate Spätburgunder is a calling-card bottling for the winery, with beautiful tart-red fruit and a layer of violets and earth to add intrigue and sophistication. It’s sourced from a variety of their sites, which are all planted to Burgundian clones of Pinot Noir, selected for their small berry size and the quality of the finished wine. Andreas only works with native yeasts, and the wine sees a full 16 months of aging and new and used barriques.