Weingut Bernhard Huber

 Malterdingen is in the deep south west of Germany, located on the foothills of the Black Forest Mountains between Strassbourg in the French Alsace Region and the city Basel in Switzerland.

 Around 70 % of the vineyards are dedicated to Pinot Noir.

The reasons therefore are:

Good climatic conditions, the corresponding soil and the long wine growing Tradition.

Malterdingen has a wonderful Pinot Noir Tradition:

For over 700 years Pinot Noir is cultivated in Malterdingen with first documented in 1285.  Cisterciensan monks brought the Pinot Noir tradition from Burgundy to the region. About eight Kilometer away from Malterdingen was a big zisterzienser monastery, the Monastery Tennenbach of wich today is just a chapel ruin left. These cisterziencer monks from the monastry Tennenbach had also a „curia“ in Malterdingen, which was a kind of  estate, wherefrom the monks managed all their vineyard work.This Curia is located in the Gewann Mönchhofmatten, which today is the location of the winery.

 The Monks found the following soil type:

 Yellow to red shell lime, mixed with a red and very ferrous clay soil, with a high stone content. It is very similar with the Terroir of the french villiages Chambolle or Chevrey Chambertin.  Due to the advanced wine culture of the zisterzienser monks, we can find today in diverse lexicons and winebooks beside the word Pinot Noir for the German word Spätburgunder, also the synonym “Malterdinger”. Under the term “Malterdinger” the wine was loved and famous in the late Middle Age in the south of Germany and in Switzerland

 Now some facts to the conditions of Malterdingen wine – growing region:

 The average rainfall is round about 800 eight hundred litres per square meter per year. In dry year still up to 550 mm. There the vineyards profit much from being located in the foothill of the Black Forest that catches in the rainclouds.

Up to 1800 sunshine hours a year makes the place one of the sunniest party of Germany. The vineyards are situated in an altitude between 230 to 310 meters.

 In the vineyard:

In planting new vineyards a quite high plant density with eight thousand vines per ha in the vineyards mashines can still be used.  And up to 13.000 vines per ha in the steep slope vineyards all the works are done by hand. In the old Pinot noir vineyards are a lot of different "selection massale" vine stocks with very small berried grapes. Today the winery works mostly the very finest burgundy clones, or  makes its own selection of pinot noirs of oldest vineyards. Individual pruning of every single vine stock, upbringing in Guyot or Cordon.

Vineyard management:

 vegetation on the soil, covering with compost, organic fertilization. During very dry periods vegetation is disturbed on the soil mechanically. Organic plant protection.

 The aims are:

small crop with very intensive tasty grapes. If necessary„ green Harvest“ in the end of July to beginning of August. Exclusive manually selective harvest .

 In the cellar:

Traditional mash fermentation for about 21 days, with natural yeast only. Very less moving in the cellar due to working with gravity flow, long maturation of the wines on the yeast. The Pinot noirs ripe up to 16 month in barriques. Natural late malolactic fermentation in spring to summer. All Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs are bottled unfiltered since 1988.