Rien sans peine. Nothing without pain, printed on every bottle (and cork) produced by Sven Enderle and Florian Moll, who together make up Enderle & Moll. Sven and Florian work in the foothills of the Black Forest in Baden, Germany- more specifically, the tiny village of Münchweier, just 20 minutes East of the Rhine. Although they showed little concern for mainstream trends and acceptance, E&M have produced what are widely regarded as some of the best pinot noir and white wines in Germany, earning them a serious cult following.

Friends from wine school in 2003, they went on to work for other producers before coming back together to make their first vintage in 2007. They were, and continue to be, a small operation. Starting out of a former potato cellar and using an old basket press, they remain very low-tech and produce their wines from just 7 ha (2.5 of which they own, the rest rented), farming everything organically and following biodynamic principles. Everything is done by hand and all wine is bottled unfined & unfiltered.

This is a small operation bucking regional trends for larger commercial production, making some extremely refined and unique wines- dudes are cool as hell:)

4-5 day fermentation on the skins, then pressed. The wine is then moved to a 1,000 liter clay tank and 30-40% of the skins are added back in. It then matures for 10 months before a super-light filtration and a tiny drop of sulfur at bottling. It is markedly darker than the other wines in the lineup but this is solely from the pigment in the skins – it doesn’t see any extra maceration time.

-vom Boden

Click here for an excellent profile of Enderle & Moll from 2013, thanks to Wine Terroirs.