Sekthaus BurkhardtSchür

Top producers usually don’t make it easy for themselves. Take Laura Burkhardt and Sebastian Schür, two highly educated and highly driven sparkling wine producers in Bürgstadt am Main in Franconia. They founded their company BurkhardtSchür in 2012. It wasn’t until 2018, after years of maturing, that their first sparkling wine came onto the market.

Classic grapes, German terroir
Laura and Sebastian use only the classic champagne varieties, so Pinot Noir, Meunier and Chardonnay. They buy the grapes from friendly winegrowers in Franconia, with vineyards along the Main and Tauber rivers, and from Weingut Salwey in Baden, where Sebastian’s brother Marcus manages the vineyards. Terroir plays a key role in this. The Pinot Noir comes from soils of weathered gneiss and Buntsandstein: sandstone that can be found in the best vineyards in the western part of Franconia. The meunier comes from vineyards on muschelkalk, a subsoil of limestone deposits typical of Franconia and Baden. Finally, the chardonnay comes from loess loam – a relatively fertile soil type that warms up quickly and retains water well – and muschelkalk.

Refined, exciting and complex
The basic material for the sekt is therefore more than fine. Due to their origin, the base wines have a clear character of their own. But that’s not all. Laura and Sebastian let their base wines mature on the yeast sediment for almost a year, in 1200-litre barrels and in smaller barriques. After blending the wines, bottling and the second fermentation, a long-term bottle maturation follows. What all that work produces are refined, exciting and complex sekt wines. Wines that are recommended by Master of Wine Anne Krebiehl and that were awarded the title Best Sekt Collection 2021 by Gerhard Eichelmann in his guide Deutschlands Weine. Wine magazine Vinum even calls BurkhardtSchür’s sekt ‘sensational’. We can fully agree with that.