New Wasenhaus Arrivals!
8/3/26 -
Wasenhaus needs little introduction, as Chambers Street Wines has been offering these stunning wines since their first vintage in 2016. Nearing almost a decade of making wine together, Christoph Wolber and Alexander Götze have created what is looked to as the standard for Burgundian style wines made in Germany. Strangely enough, the two Germans met in Burgundy each on their own journey in wine. Between the two of them they worked at Comte Armand, Leflaive, de Montille, Pierre Morey, Bernard van Berg, and Domaine de la Vougeraie. The name Wasenhaus comes from a farm that Christoph grew up on and their focus is in old vines, old clones, and vineyards that have been ignored for being too hard to work, or for their low yields. This along with organic farming, with biodynamics sprinkled in, and a hands-off approach to winemaking has evolved into Chardonnays, Pinot Noirs, and Weissburgunders that are showstoppers!
All the wines here are bottled as "Landwein" but break down into the categories of estate-level, soil type, and single-vineyard. The estate-level wines are simply labeled with the grape varietal: Chardonnay, Spätburgunder, or Weissburgunder. Their soil level, which only applies for Spätburgunder, includes Vulkan (volcanic, Kaiserstuhl soils) and Kalk (limestone soils). And lastly is the single-vineyard wines: Bellen, Filzen, Hohlen, Kanzel, and Möhlin. This year we have a special and limited vertical 3 pack of Möhlin inlcuding a bottle each of 2018, 2020, and 2024. The '18 and '20 just arrived straight from the estate with the current release and provides an amazing way to deep dive into this very special vineyard. Mixed in throughout this offer is also an array of large format bottles because magnums show you care.
-Hanna Krilov Cohen
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Read below for Stephen Bitterolf's notes on the 2024 vintage from Wasenhaus:
"The 2024 vintage is for sure one of the lightest, most ethereal, most soil-driven vintages I've tasted at Wasenhaus - 2021, maybe 2016 in some ways, are the two most obvious comparisons. Luckily, Wasenhaus is so far south they largely missed the devastating frosts of 2024. In this regard they are among the lucky few. Still, it was a cold and wet vintage causing substantial losses and low yields. Only 2021 is a smaller vintage for them. Yet the conditions improved for the harvest and they, uniquely, found themselves with grapes where the sugar levels stopped rising (meaning the wines have quite low levels of alcohol) even though the grapes reached a perfect phenolic ripeness.In the end, the vintage is linear, taut, energetic.
The Spätburgunders have lovely washes of red berry fruit, yet they are very herbal, aromatic, and profoundly soil-driven. I suspect they will be more food wines in their youth. Those that can cellar them for 2-5 years will be in for a serious treat. These wines have structure.
The white wines, well, these are the obvious strength of the vintage. They are pushing, linear, deep, rippling with fruit and that same herbal complexity, that same soil transparency as the reds. These are among the best whites the estate has made, I think."
