The Doctor Has Your Wine!

I had the true pleasure of meeting Simone Adams this past week. Soft-spoken, but quietly confident, earnest, and genuine. Where market demand and climate tendencies have many German producers leaning into fruit, oak, and alcohol, she uses her considerable abilities as a doctor of oenology to produce restrained, cool climate iterations of varietal wines. While many of her neighbors, enamored of Burgundy’s quality and prestige, plant French clones, she uses only German Ritter clones.

Simone’s estate, given the formal name of AdamsWein, is farmed biodynamically, and she subscribes to the particularly scientific ecological approach of regenerative viticulture as well. This is, put simply, a method of farming that actively enriches the immediate ecosystem and the broader environment, rather than solely negating impact – sustainability taken a significant step further. Her commitment to freshness and to honest bottlings of Spätburgunder (no Dornfelder blended in for color or fruit concentration) is unwavering. In the age of climate change, this can mean harvesting as early as August, when the European tendency is to be on vacation.

In the cellar, all of her wines are spontaneously fermented. Her red wines are vinified in oak but mostly in large formats with a limited proportion of new barrels. Her entry-level Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) is done entirely in used 1200-liter oak barrels. The top wines receive the highest percentage of new oak, about 20%, so as to focus on the fruit and on the character of the grape itself.

Not to be overshadowed, the whites are just as worthy of attention. Simone’s Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc) is among the highest character examples of the variety in the market. Fermented and aged entirely in stainless steel and maintained on its lees until bottling, the purity of Ingelheim’s terroir is on full display.

I’m thrilled to welcome Simone Adams to wine-sense!