Chardonnay
⏳ Drinking Window
2022 - 2027
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
creamy mushroom risotto, roasted chicken, grilled sea bass
✨ Technical Specifications
Weingut Bernhart's Chardonnay is a masterclass in cool-climate, border-terroir winemaking. Grown in the limestone-rich soils of Schweigen-Rechtenbach, where vineyards seamlessly cross the German-French border into Alsace, this wine benefits from a unique geographical and cultural synthesis. Embracing traditional Burgundian methods, the grapes are carefully selected, gently pressed, and fermented using native yeasts. The wine is typically aged on its fine lees in French oak barriques, which imparts a creamy texture, subtle nutty complexity, and elegant structural depth. The result is a highly precise, mineral-driven Chardonnay that beautifully balances vibrant acidity with rich notes of yellow stone fruit, toasted brioche, and a salty, limestone-driven finish.
🍾 About the Producer
Weingut Bernhart is situated in Schweigen-Rechtenbach along the southernmost fringe of the Pfalz, right at the French frontier near the historic Deutsches Weintor. While the family's agricultural roots date back centuries, estate bottling commenced under Willi and Wilma Bernhart in 1971, followed by their accession to the VDP in 2004 and formal organic certification in 2012. Today led by Gerd and Sabine Bernhart, the estate commands a singular cross-border terroir: approximately two-thirds of its roughly 20 hectares of vineyards are technically situated on French soil in Alsace, governed by special bilateral treaties that allow the wines to bear German designations. The viticultural backbone rests on dense, fossil-rich limestone, calcareous marl, and clay deposits across benchmark cru plots such as the Schweigener Sonnenberg. Winemaking emphasizes spontaneous fermentation, lees contact, and judicious wood aging, generating deeply structured, mineral-driven white and red expressions epitomized by their Kalkmergel and Grosses Gewächs bottlings.
🍇 Grapes
Chardonnay
🍷 ABV
12.5-13.5%