Winemaker Notes
Talrain is on the border of the Black Forest and at 500m is the second highest elevation vineyard in Germany. Soils are limestone with a layer of iron-rich clay. The oldest vines are nearly 50 years old.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Bottled only for the second time, the Pinot Noir 2015 Talrain offers a pure, warm and refined, highly elegant and beautifully balanced and well-articulated bouquet of ripe dark cherries and wild forest berries intermixed with herbal and spicy notes that reflect the iron-rich limestone soil of this very particular terroir at 500 meters above sea level. The 2014 nose was already impressive, but this 2015 is fascinating in its purity, freshness and precision. On the palate, this is a generous, amazingly silky but also lush and generous Pinot with fine tannins and a very long and tensioned finish. This Talrain comes pretty close to the Jaspis level, and if it were a Burgundy, it would be between village and 1er cru level from a top producer. What peppery tension and vitality on the finish! The iron intertwines perfectly with the finesse and elegance of the Jurassic limestone terroir. An amazing wine from a great vintage and most probably the best buy here from this vintage.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
