Odinstal: The Vineyard in the Forest

Down in the valley

Odinstal’s only vineyard down in the sea of vines lies at 120 metres between Niederkirchen and Friedelsheim, on sand, planted in the eighties. Unlike almost all the estate’s wines, this one does not sit on its skins in the tank, because Schumann wants it to be easy to understand. We start with it so that you can taste the difference from the hill.

350 N.N.

Our three 350s, Pinot Blanc, Auxerrois and Gewürztraminer, carry the altitude of the clearing in their names; N.N. stands for above sea level. Up top, half the vineyard is Riesling, just under a third Pinot Blanc, the rest Auxerrois, Silvaner, Gewürztraminer and Rieslaner. The 350s are made in a similar way: spontaneously fermented, with the malolactic conversion that softens the sharp malic acid, some whole, uncrushed bunches in the tank, little sulphur. The Pinot Blanc and the Auxerrois spend seven months on the lees.

Four rocks

The four soils lie side by side, and Schumann bottles them separately: three Rieslings, all made the same way, with a few whole bunches, in stainless steel, spontaneously fermented and almost two years on the lees, until July 2025. What differs is the rock beneath the roots. And, in 2023, the sugar: Schumann lets fermentation end wherever it stops of its own accord. The Basalt was left with just under eleven grams per litre, the Muschelkalk just under thirteen. Off-dry, then, but with around seven grams of acidity you taste it as tension, not as sweetness.

The third of the trio is the Riesling Buntsandstein 2023, from the estate’s oldest vines, planted in 1978, the year Schumann was born, on a soil that yields around twenty hectolitres per hectare. We have only 19 bottles of it left, approx. €42, which is why it is not in a case.

Right at the top

Thomas Hensel, who owns the estate, looked at the house on his way home for ten years before he was able to buy it. At the time it had neither water nor electricity. Hans-Günter Schwarz, for many years cellar master at Müller-Catoir, thought a wine estate up there mad, but possible. Today the clearing is a Grosse Lage, the highest classification in the VDP, and a monopole: it belongs entirely to the estate. The Riesling GG comes from the best parcels on basalt, Muschelkalk and Buntsandstein, the Pinot Blanc GG from vines on Keuper and basalt, the oldest planted in 1988. In 2023 Odinstal bottled no Riesling GG, hence the 2022. Because both are made so naturally, Schumann often has to fight for the official approval number at the state quality test. Both need air and time.

Herxheim am Berg

Only one thing really does not ripen up there: red wine. So in 2024 the estate leased the Schumacher family’s winery for twenty years, eight kilometres further north, in Herxheim am Berg, beyond Bad Dürkheim: a former Cistercian monastery steward’s house with a vaulted cellar more than six hundred years old, and a clos, a walled vineyard. The clos is the heart of the Himmelreich site and lies behind limestone walls six metres high: a south-facing slope, sheltered from the wind, very calcareous soil, lower and warmer than the clearing, and planted with Burgundian clones since the eighties. “The rare chance to interpret one of the great historic terroirs of the Pfalz,” says Thomas Hensel.

With the Honigsack and the red GG, the estate bottled its first red vintage in 2024. Of the Honigsack there are five barriques, that is, small casks, from a yield of ten hectolitres per hectare, because in 2024 many flowers fell without setting berries. The red Grosses Gewächs, the Spätburgunder GG Himmelreich Herxheim 2024, was shown in August at the VDP pre-release tasting and stood out there because it tasted unlike anything beside it: of plum and incense, “more like a very, very old Burgundian style”, as one taster who was there wrote. 61 bottles, approx. €85.

Nakt, and a Sekt

“Nakt” is what Schumann calls the wines that go into the bottle without filtration and without sulphur. The Riesling 190 N.N. grows on a terraced vineyard where no tractor goes, and three vintages, 2018 to 2020, were fermented together on the skins. The Sekt comes only in magnum: old Riesling vines from the Schlossberg and younger ones from the Muschelkalk, bottled with Demeter beet sugar, riddled by hand, with no dosage, that is, no sugar added after disgorgement, and with no added sulphur from start to finish. It carries a vintage only if it has spent at least thirty months on the lees.