This year's Decanter World Wine Awards Regional Trophy for German Red over £15 went to Dagernova, No. 1 Spätburgunder, Ahr 2011 (13.5%)
Tasted against:
- Meyer-Näkel, Dernauer Pfarrwingert Erste Lage, Ahr 2011
- Schloss Proschwitz, Spätburgunder Grosses Gewächs, Sachsen 2011
Profile:
At last year’s DWWA, Dagernova won the international Pinot Noir Trophy for its 2011 Heimersheimer Kapellenberg Pinot Noir, a single-vineyard wine. Affirming the quality of its output and maintaining its success this year is the prophetically titled No1 Spätburgunder, made with fruit from selected, low-yielding old vineyards. And whereas the heimersheimer Kapellenberg was aged in oak, this Trophy-winner sees only stainless steel.
Dagernova believes that the wine is classic Ahr Pinot Noir: ‘It has the typical characteristics of Ahr wine. You will taste the minerals and the influence of the slate stone terraces, where the labour is always manual and where the grapes are carefully handpicked by the growers.’
Dagernova is a co-operative whose roots stretch back to its foundation in 1873 by a group of poor grape growers in the village of Dernau. Over the past few decades it has merged with several other co-ops, and today there are 600 ‘family’ members harvesting their land (the total land under vine is 150 hectares). In recent years it has also invested some E5 million into its facilities and today its annual production stands at more than one million bottles a year, 20,000 of them this Trophy winner.
Written by Decanter
