Mundusvini 2018: Visiting Organic, Vegan winery Pfaffmann 1616

Wine, they say, is all about story telling. There should be an interesting, plausible story behind every wine label or winery to make it different from the ocean of competitors. Every label ought to tell a story-about the history, geography, geology, topography, terroir, winemaking techiniques- whatever that has credibility. Pfaffmann Wine Estate in Walsheim, a small village around 40 kms-15 minutes drive when no traffic, from Deidesheim where I was staying for the 13th time to judge at Mundusvini international wine competition. Pfaffmann has quite a few such stories making it more and more popular within and outside the country-and of course the wines are excellent quality.

Pawel Hener is an aeronautic engineer, currently the 18th generation family member who is the Managing Director of the organically certified wine estate near Landau, in the south- western part of Pfalz. His half-brother who was assisting his father Gustav run the winery, suddenly decided to quit the business and so he was called in change his plans, leave his job and come and run the estate. Pawel agreed but decided to go to Boston to study MBA first.   

Kanupriya Anand is a Punjabi girl with an F & B background from Vasant Kunj. She was similarly asked by her father to leave her job at the Hyatt and help him run his successful courier company. She decided to go to Boston to study for her MBA before immersing herself fully into the family business.

Here were shades of the super-hit Hollywood movie, The Love Story with Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neil-except this one had a happy ending.  They met in the college on her third day in the US. Theirs   was not love at first sight (she disliked him for his German orderliness and discipline, she says) but Pawel had his eyes set on her and did everything possible to make her and her parents agree to her marrying him. Not only did she add Hener to her name, but the beer drinker became a connoisseur of German Riesling.

If the story does not grab you, how about this-when I reached Deidesheim, I received frantic massages inviting me to visit the Pfaffmann winery; it was very close to my hotel and Pawel promised to pick me up and drop me back. As it happens, at Mundusvini, we are allowed an evening free to do what we like. So I consented to visit the winery next day- little realizing that I had met them both about 15 months earlier in Delhi at a private tasting at Pullman Aerocity and liking them and their wines.

400 year old historic winery

An historic winery established 400 years ago, in 1616 would evoke anyone’s interest in the winery. Of course, the 17 generations before Pawel were not making or selling wine like today. His ancestors were farmers who started from growing grapes and selling them to bottling and then setting up their own facilities-from grape to the bottle with several sophisticated modern machines.

Organic and Vegan

With a vine surface area of about 150 hA and production of 1.5 million liter wine per year- half of which are sold as organic bulk wine, Winery Heinz Pfaffmann (now changed to Pfaffmann1616) is the biggest Certified Organic Winery with Bioland Certification in the whole of Germany and perhaps Europe, asserts Pawel. ‘Since we grow 35 grape varieties, it is not practical for the family to produce and market wines from all these grapes and we find it financially prudent to sell half the production as organic bulk wine which commands good premium of 80-100% and can be a profitable business. We also sell grapes to some of the well-known producers of our area,’ he says. They have established themselves so even the producers in the area like to buy bulk organic wine from them.

Pawel is not a winemaker or someone who grew up in the winery in order to be the natural successor to his father Gustav Pfaffmann. But he persuaded his father to transform the winery into 100% organic, and get it certified. Pawel has also taken up the responsibility to aggressively market the wines and Kanupriya helps him in the winery and office work.

The 150 hA of vineyards are divided into several parcels around the winery. I went to visit one of these during the cold evening before sunset. Although they use several varieties from single vineyard, they don’t like to label them as such.

The wines are a tad expensive for retail but for discerning connoisseurs offer excellent value-for-money wines at very good prices. The German wine lovers will absolutely adore these wines.

I tasted several of their wines after the round of vineyards and a visit to the winery- including an excellent Sauvignon Blanc 2016, a Weissburgunder, Blanc de Noir, Riesling, Chardonnay, a KIrchberger red and a couple of seductive sweet wines which are always difficult to sell in India unless some new marketing strategy is evolved but divine on the palate, nevertheless.  

Indian food goes very well with German Rieslings and fruity Sauvignon Blanc-whether it is cooked in Delhi, Deidesheim or Walsheim. Kanupriya, who prepared tasty Indian food for me, had the spices just right to match the diverse range of wines we tasted.

Indians are getting finally quite sensitized to organic foods in the big cities and wines have started following the trend. Since organic wines also means sustainability, the conscientious Indians have started to put their weight behind organic wine and are hopefully willing to pay the small premium on them. In any case, they like the wine to have good flavours and organic wines do not play a spoil sport in any way. Pfaffmann would have slight advantage over other similar wines as they are certified organic. To the Heners, being organic is a way of life and everything edible or drinkable must be organic, if they can help it. Pawel travels around the world as a Speaker to promote organic wines and motivates people around him.

They have an edge over most of the producers being represented in India. Though they are not certified, Pfaffmann wines are vegan. The consumables used to process wines, especially filtration and fining are areas where in the past material used could be objectionable to the millions of Indians who are vegetarians and would not drink wine as it had blood, eggs, fish parts or whatever else they were told by the wine people. This could make a major story in the Indian market.   

One hopes the wines which have already been accepted by several hotels like St. Regis, Oberoi Gurgaon and even Pullman Aerocity where I met the Heners in November 2016, and they placed an order that could not be executed due to what else- the Delhi Excise Policy! It is a matter of time the wines will find a way to the best of hotels and restaurants. In any case, Pfaffmann might not be interested in supplying big numbers to India.

I would say Zum Wohl (Cheers in Pfalz) to their wines and Jai Ho (Cheers in India)! And welcome these wines in my wine cellar after they appoint a new distributor.

Subhash Arora

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