Douze Points 2023 (Litre Bottle) - Katla Wines

Originally from the suburbs of Mönchengladbach in the industrial Rhineland, it took leaving Germany for Jas to find her way into wine. Following her nose and picking her mentors well, Jas is now settled in Wöllstein in Rheinhessen, where she runs her micro-négoce, as well as keeping just under a hectare of vines herself. Working and studying wine at restaurants around Europe, Jas' swansong in service came at Dill in Reykjavík, the first restaurant in Iceland to win a Michelin star, where she worked as a sommelier. What followed was a series of stages with producers whose wines she loved, most notably a now-retired doyen of southern Ardèche wine, Gilles Azzoni, who incidentally introduced me to Jas' wines while I myself was staging at Gilles' cellar in les Salelles. It was Gilles who impressed on Jas the possibility of producing wines without a family estate or owning vines (Gilles, himself a Parisian, did it in 1980). Inspired and encouraged, Jas took what savings she had to rent a corner of a cellar in the Mosel, and source fruit from the disparate band of growers behind the region's burgeoning viticultural enlightenment.
Her first vintage was 2019, with 2,500 litres produced. It was a case of the right place at the right time for Jas. As a micro-négoce, she collaborates with growers at the epicentre of contemporary German winemaking from her base in Rheinhessen, working with varieties well-adapted to the pressures of the modern vineyard and a shifting climate. Sourcing grapes from Nahe, Pfalz, Rheinhessen and beyond, Jas applies the same subversive spirit in making her blends, deliberate in her crossing of borders, varieties, and colours, critiquing the hegemony of single-sites or noble varieties.

Bred almost 20 years after Dornfelder at the same institute in Wurttemberg, Cabernet Dorsa is a more obscure graduate from Germany's postwar ampelographic research, aiming to produce varieties that could ripen and colour in the cooler northern climate. Originally recorded as a cross of Cabernet Sauvignon and Dornfelder (hence the name), we now know it's a cross of Blaufrankisch and Dornfelder. Given this parentage, it's no surprise that the variety produces inky, robust reds. Its frost hardiness makes it a useful tool for growers since they were permitted to plant it commercially in 2003, but with under 500 hectares in total planted, it remains on the extreme fringes of German viticulture. To find it in a single varietal bottling, as we do here, is exceptionally rare.

Grapes: Cabernet Dorsa

Region: Rheinhessen, Germany

ABV: 15%