Top 100 white wines of Ahr
Discover the top 100 best white wines of Ahr as well as the best winemakers in the region. Explore the varietals of the white wines that are popular of Ahr and the best vintages to taste in this region.
Discovering the wine region of Ahr
Ahr is one of Germany’s least-known and Northernmost wine regions, known for its Pinot Noir reds. It Lies immediately north of the Mosel, and follows the Ahr River in the Final stages of its journey towards its confluence with the Rhein.
One might expect a wine region this far north (50°N) to specialize in white wines – like almost every other cool-Climate wine region. After all, neighboring Mosel and Mittelrhein both clearly favor white wines (around 85 percent).
However Ahr producing around 85 percent red wines, of which around three-quarters are made from Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir). The classic example is brick red in Color and smells of red cherries, Sweetspices and forest floor. Barrel-aging can add spice and savory notes.
Ahr Pinot Noir is now a much more Serious, modern and "international" wine style that it once was.
Until 30 years ago, the wines were often slightly sweet and very pale. Today they are invariably Dry and deeper in color – although still much paler than the inky Pinots found in, say, Central Otago.
Across Germany (most obviously in Pfalz and Baden), assisted by climate change, the popularity of Pinot Noir has been steadily increasing. The wave of interest has carried German Spätburgunder to new heights, and saved from near-extinction the earlier-ripening Pinot Noir clone, Fruhburgunder.
News from the vineyard of Ahr
Walls: Tavel and its unexpected revolution
When asked which is the most exciting appellation in the Rhône, there’s one that currently springs to mind before all others: Tavel. I have to be honest with you: I don’t buy much rosé. So, given that Tavel is, according to The Oxford Companion to Wine, ‘one of France’s few all-rosé appellations,’ my response might be unexpected. The Oxford Companion is technically correct, of course – the wines made here are paler than a typical red wine. But compared to other rosés, that’s where the comparison ...
Andrew Jefford: ‘2021 has been the year of all the miseries’
How’s the weather been this year? Awful. ‘La nature m’écoeure’, one of my wine-growing friends posted on Facebook on 8 April, having been out to look at the frost-crippled shoots on his vines that morning: ‘Nature disgusts me’. It takes a lot to make a wine-grower feel that. He wasn’t alone. Jeremiads echo around the northern hemisphere as 2021 closes. It’s been the year of all the miseries. None suffered more horribly than the growers of Germany’s Ahr valley, where floodwaters caused by the fou ...
Walls: Domaine de la Janasse, Vieilles Vignes 2011-2000 vertical
Some Châteauneufs are more reliable than others. When I visit the region to taste the new vintage every year, Domaine de la Janasse’s cuvée Vieilles Vignes regularly features among the best. It’s a particularly dense and concentrated wine when young, and it always strikes me that, even for Châteauneuf, it’s a wine that needs extended ageing to show its best. I was keen to acquire a more complete understanding of how this cuvée develops, so I visited brother-and-sister team Isabelle and Christoph ...