Domaine Barmès-Buecher

Swearing off pesticides and herbicides, François threw himself into the transformation with boundless drive. In late August, while neighbors took advantage of being in the Vosges’ rain shadow to snatch a little vacation, François would be pacing his rows, painstakingly tying the tops of adjacent vines to one another to maximize sun exposure without trimming. The vineyards pulsed with newfound vitality. The Domaine earned full biodynamic certification in 2001, and François’s rich wines gained energy from one year to the next over the course of a decade that bore out his most optimistic hopes.

Then, just before the 2011 harvest, catastrophe struckwhen François died in a cycling accident. As the whole region mourned the loss, the family was tasked with replacing an irreplaceable man. In Sophie, Genevieve had a daughter with a sharp mind for commerce. Her son Maxime, however, had yet to finish the enological studies that were preparing him to join his father one day. An early experience at D’Angerville in Volnay had planted the seeds of Burgundian prowess with Pinot Noir, but François’s tragic death threw the timetable into fast-forward. So, leaving school early, Maxime returned to Wettolsheim to carry the family project forward.

He has done his father—and forefathers—proud. Blessed with the same sturdy physique, but flashing a dreamer’s squinty smile beneath his ruffled hair, Maxime shares François’s intuitive connection to the land. Plying the verdant hills in an antiquated red-and-white Citroën fitted out with a jaunty custom horn, he’s constantly plunging his hands into the dirt to marvel over the universe in each palmful.

Stopping here and there on the east-northeast slope of the family’s Rosenberg vineyard, his fingers rake through clayey limestone, pink sandstone, chalk, and flint—soils whose “good-natured” diversity he finds reflected in wines that are at once generous and invigoratingly tense, and often etched with just a hint of mouth-watering bitterness. We ride along, mapping the territory to our tasting notes. A Pinot Blanc from this lieu-dit offers a creamy evocation of orchard fruit and saline minerality. A Sylvaner, from vines planted in 1969/70, is a svelte and lemony stunner touched with nuts. Malolactic is blocked in both cuvées, preserving the taut freshness of this naturally rich fruit.

Maxime continues to make some of the sweet wines that his father excelled with, notably a Riesling and Gewurztraminer from the Grand Cru Steingrublervineyard—whose soils the young vigneron describes in almost painterly terms: “a  palette of beige (the limestone), white (the quartz), and burgundy red (the sandstone).” The sweetness of these dense wines—all plump yellow fruit and elegant spice—is balanced by firm acidity that fosters incredible depth and length.

Yet the younger Barmès has brought a more modern sensibility to the estate by amplifying its focus on dry cuvées.  Over in the Clos Sand vineyard, spine-tingling breezes waft down from a green acacia grove, chilling a steep southeast-facing slope that’s always the last to ripen despite ample sun. Its granitic soil lends a brilliant shine to a bone-dry Riesling that’s stony, citric, savory and spiced. Barmès-Buecher also crafts a Grand Cru Riesling from the warmest spot in the village, the southeast-facing Hengst parcel, whose heavy marlradiates with afternoon heat over a substrate of Oligocene limestone, producing a powerful cuvée whose apple-and-apricot lushness is galvanized by fresh acidity within an elegantly athletic frame. Massalselections of Burgundy-sourced Pinot Noir flourish on nearby plots, from whose de-stemmed fruit Maxime makes a silky reserve bottling redolent of spiced cranberries and botanical intrigue.

It takes skill in the cellar to make such terroir-expressive wines, and the domaine’s Crémant D’Alsace exemplifies Maxime’s technical growth over time. Hand-harvested Pinot Auxerrois, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc goes into stainless steel tanks where primary fermentation is halted with cold temperature when residual sugar levels reach precisely 24 grams per liter. It is then transferred to bottles—without chaptalisation—to undergo secondary fermentation purely with the sugar from the grapes. The result, a prismatic sparkler whose sapid core glistens with honeyed orchard fruit and wildflowers, speaks volumes about the way this family takes every last cue from their land while safeguarding the purity of its fruits.  

It can be no coincidence that the family members are also in such close harmony with one another. This always comes out at dinner. After Sophie leads us through a tasting at a big circular table in an old chamber that abuts the main cellar, we cross a courtyard suffused with the transportive scent of Genevieve’s roasting potatoes. Presiding over the meal at the kitchen table, Maxime keeps darting down to a different cellar and returning with bottles holding François’s old vintages. He can’t help himself—each one calls forth all kinds of emotions, making palpablethe abiding connection that links his father’s legacy to his own work renewing and refining it.

“We don’t set out to differentiate ourselves from others,” the family explains. “What we do differentiate is a moment in time, by being in tune with the seasons, the vineyard plot, and the weather. We adapt to the elements around us, to the needs of the land, in order toguide and support it and enable it to reach its true potential.”

“For us, crafting a wine is not about applying a biodynamic recipe,” they emphasize. “It’s about being open to the present moment, to each moment in time. It’s a feeling—it’s about being in tune with the living world.”