Sven Enderle

Sven Enderle and Florian Moll started with three barrels in a garage in Baden in 2007. Over the next twelve years they built one of the most talked-about natural wine projects in Germany, by tracking down old, very low-yielding Pinot Noir that commercial estates had given up on and farming it without synthetic treatments. People started saying Baden and Burgundy in the same sentence, which had not happened for a while.

Sven left in 2019 and started again from nothing. These days he works as a négociant, which in his case means hunting down specific old parcels rather than buying fruit by the tonne: Pinot Noir and Lemberger across Baden, and Müller-Thurgau and Rosé from a fifty-year-old slate parcel in the Mosel that gives a mineral edge you do not get in Baden.

He sources from Weil am Rhein up to Heilbronn, the full width of the region, and works with some of the oldest Pinot Noir vines in Germany. Always limestone or chalk.

Naming the Pinot Noir after the soil is an unusually honest piece of labelling, and it holds up in the glass. Kalk is limestone and tends to come out finer and more precise. Keuper, the chalk around Heilbronn, gives something broader and earthier. Same hands, same cellar, genuinely different wines. The single-site Himmelberg is the most focused of the Keuper bottlings.

The Lemberger, which is the German name for Blaufränkisch, comes off Keuper near Heilbronn and is the dark, peppery one. There is a straight version and a Keuper bottling.

The Müller-Thurgau is the surprise. Fifty-year-old vines on Mosel slate, skin contact, and nothing like the thin anonymous Müller-Thurgau most people have had the misfortune to meet. All minerality and nerve. It comes in magnum too, which is the right format for it. The Alea Rosé, Pinot Noir with Pinot Gris, is the easy one.

Sven only takes fruit from parcels farmed without synthetic chemicals. That goes back to the Enderle & Moll days, when he and Florian deliberately sought out vineyards that had been abandoned for cropping too lightly to be worth anyone’s while commercially. Low yields turn out to make very good wine.

The cellar work is as light as he can make it. No pumping, wild fermentation on native yeasts, and the Pinot Noir goes to barrel before bottling.

Baden is one of the more underrated places in German wine, a long strip running south from Heidelberg to the Swiss border with a ridiculous spread of geology: Muschelkalk limestone in the north, Keuper chalk around Heilbronn, volcanic basalt on the Kaiserstuhl. Sven treats each soil as a separate story and bottles it that way, which is the clearest explanation of what he is doing.

Is Sven Enderle the same as Enderle & Moll?

No, not any more. Sven co-founded Enderle & Moll in 2007 and left in 2019 to start his own project. Enderle & Moll continues without him, and confusingly another person named Enderle has since joined it. We stock both.

What do Kalk and Keuper mean?

They are soil types, and Sven names the Pinot Noir after them. Kalk is limestone and gives a finer, more precise wine. Keuper is the chalk found around Heilbronn and gives something broader and earthier.

Where does the Müller-Thurgau come from?

A fifty-year-old parcel on slate soils in the Mosel, not Baden. It is mineral, textural and bears no resemblance to the thin supermarket versions of this grape. There is a magnum as well.

Does Sven Enderle own vineyards?

He works as a négociant, buying fruit from carefully selected old-vine parcels across Baden and the Mosel, all farmed without synthetic chemicals. It is the same approach he took at Enderle & Moll, where the pair went looking for old vines others had written off.

Do Sven Enderle wines contain sulphites?

A small amount of sulphur goes in just before bottling for stability, around 25mg per litre, and nothing else is added at any point. We would rather tell you that than imply zero.

Which Sven Enderle wine should I start with?

The Müller-Thurgau, which is the most immediately surprising bottle in the range. For the Pinot Noir, Kalk and Keuper side by side is the most interesting fifteen euros of education in German wine you can buy.