501: This Conversation with Meike Näkel Has A Terrifying Turn

Meike Näkel and her sister Dörte run the Meyer-Näkel winery in the Ahr region of Germany.

As a winery, over 90% of Meyer-Näkel's production is of red wine, and most of that is Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir). Meike explains that the historical roots of red wine production in the Ahr region may stretch back to the 14th century, and that there may have been Spätburgunder planted in Ahr in the 19th century. She discusses the situation for the red wines of Germany in general and the situation for wine in the Ahr in the 1970s and 1980s. Meike also talks about how her father Werner Näkel significantly expanded the production of the winery by acquiring vineyards in the 1980s and later. Meike distinguishes between the sorts of concentrated dry red wines from limited grape yields her father was making from Spätburgunder, and the more mass production sweet red wines that at one time were more common from the Ahr. She also touches on how her father learned about wine as an autodidact, traveling to regions like Burgundy and speaking with vigneron like Henri Jayer about various topics related to the production of Pinot Noir.

Meike discusses the evolution of the German wine consumer and the popular taste for wine within Germany in the second half of the twentieth century until now. She notes some of the top German dry red wine producers of the 1980s and 1990s, a group which included her father Werner. She also talks about the shift at the winery as she and her sister Dörte took on more decisions for the property and the wines. Meike describes going to Burgundy for an internship with Dominique Lafon of Comtes Lafon in Meursault. She remembers tasting the Meyer-Näkel wines with Dominique and getting his feedback on winemaking techniques such as a cold soak maceration and a delayed malolactic conversion, which she then implemented back home. Meike talks about using winemaking techniques to increase the fruit aspect of wines from the Ahr that typically show more savory notes owing to the climate and rock type of the vineyards. She further notes the encounter with biodynamic farming techniques that she saw at Comtes Lafon, and how that encounter affected the evolution of the vineyard farming at Meyer-Näkel.

Meike compares and contrasts the wines of her father with the wines that she made with her sister at the start of their work at the winery, and then again to the wines that they are producing more recently. She talks about the old German Pinot Noir clones and how they are different from the newer Pinot Noir clones from Burgundy. Meike also details what using a mix of both types in the vineyards can mean for the wines. She notes that their region has been affected by climate change from 2003 onwards and that this has affected their approach to the vineyard work. She discusses how climate change in Germany and in Europe has led to a change in the weather during the summer months. She expresses a belief that the more or less stable summer weather conditions of the past have given way to more extreme weather events during the summer months in recent years.

Meike talks about Spätburgunder, and what characteristics are important to find in a Pinot Noir wine. She also describes the characteristics of Frühburgunder, a grape variety that is similar to Spätburgunder. She touches on the characteristics of Frühburgunder in both the vineyard and in the resulting wine. Meike shares her process of rediscovering the characteristics of specific vineyards in her area, which is necessary because the German Wine Law of 1971 wiped out the hierarchical distinctions between some vineyards. She talks about distinguishing which were the best vineyards historically and now, and how she goes about that process. She then describes the characteristics of some the top Spätburgunder wines produced by the winery today.

Meike addresses some of the more recent winemaking changes at the