Teutonic Tinto Part 5: Jürgen von der Mark Pinot Noir For Unto Us A Child Was Born 2008, Baden

In the weeks ahead I am willing to confront my palate with a couple of Teutonic Tintos (resp. German Pinot Noir). The favoured few will come from various viticulture regions and subregions from all over Germany. I am thinking about places like Breisgau in Baden, Württemberg, Kaiserstuhl in Baden, Franken, Mosel, Rheingau and Pfalz. The actual selection process will be rather imprudent, spontaneous and certainly without the intention to present the pick of the best from each region. In short: everything Teutonic, ready to drink, hopefully drinkable and available (in the cellar) gets beheaded in the forthcoming three weeks.

Today, I would like to start with the top shelf Pinot from Master of Wine Jürgen von der Mark. His winery is situated in Markgräflerland's Bad Bellingen in the very South-West of Germany. The vineyard for his “Liedwein” (song wine) from 2008 “For unto us a child was born” is situated in Breisgau's Tuniberg region just South of Freiburg. Well, let's hope this Pinot will sing to me as magnificently exhilarating as Händel's song from the oratorio Messiah ...

The colour of “For unto us a child was born” showed rather bright-radiant ruby reflexes with plenty of transparency and a slight and marginal discolouration towards red-brown on the outer rim. Its nose was dominated by fragrances of ripe, not overripe or jamy seeming, strawberry and more serious and slightly tart odoriferous raspberries. Besides that I got some shy appearing fragrances of assorted wild herbs, local ones, subtle smoke and a nuance of warm oak. On the palate there where quite a lot of bright red berries (strawberries and raspberries) with a minute touch of warmth and a cunning impulse of very relaxed fruit sweetness in the background. Luckily without any trace of boiled fruit. In addition to those pretty dominant and not all too profoundly gripping flavours I imagined to taste some beetroot, delicate milk chocolate, traces of mildly roasted hazelnuts and again a few assorted impressions of rather shy wild herbs. The potpourri of aromas seemed really fine. Perhaps not all too complex, though. The structure of the “For unto us a child was born” seemed quite impressively subtle, mostly vivid and from the light side and far more serious as well as definitely more coolness emanating than most Pinots from this southern, and most of the time quite hot - in Pinot sense,  region of Baden. However, I would not like to dispute about its actual provenance of this Pinot. In my opinion there was plenty of rich character from South Baden in this wine. In this case ... simply in a very convincing, well balanced way ... and surely not in an exaggerated-overextracted-fruitboiled-overoaked-or-whatsoever-way. I enjoyed this respectable and very decent ***** Pinot quite a lot.