Julian Haart – Pinot Noir 2024

Julian Haart – Pinot Noir 2024: The red counterpart to the Mosel Rieslings

The 2024 Pinot Noir from the Julian Haart winery is a particularly rare wine – a red from the heart of the Mosel that bears the hallmark of one of Germany’s most distinguished winemakers and impressively demonstrates that the Mosel has far more to offer than world-class Rieslings.

The Winery: A Prodigy of the Mosel

Julian Haart is regarded as the ‘prodigy’ of the German wine-growing scene. Since the 2010 vintage, he and his wife Nadine Haart have been harvesting their grapes around the picturesque village of Piesport on the Middle Mosel. On the spectacular steep Mosel slate slopes, they cultivate just five hectares – a tiny area by Mosel standards, but one that guarantees the very highest quality. Julian Haart’s apprenticeship with Emrich-Schönleber (Nahe), Heymann-Löwenstein (Mosel), Egon Müller (Saar) and Klaus-Peter Keller (Rheinhessen) laid the foundations for his work. His wines appear more powerful than other Middle Mosel wines; they are creamier and, alongside their body and schist minerality, possess spectacular elegance and depth. These are classic wines for ageing, for which the Mosel is so famous.

Pinot Noir: A red treasure from Burgundy clones

Alongside his legendary Rieslings, Julian Haart also devotes himself to Pinot Noir – “naturally from Burgundy clones”, as the winery’s description states. The vines come from the Ohligsberg in Wintrich, where Julian Haart’s father planted a plot of Pinot Noir as early as 1987. In 2021, Julian Haart bottled his first estate Pinot Noir as a red wine – he had previously bottled the Pinot as a rosé. The quantity is minuscule: only two barrels were produced in the first bottling.

The 2024 vintage: A cool, precise vintage

The 2024 vintage was characterised by cool conditions on the Moselle. Julian Haart describes it as “a perfect year in itself, especially for Kabinetts. A vintage just like in the 90s!” The wine experts at Weinfurore confirm: “Julian Haart is a master of balance and, regardless of the weather, always manages to impress with freshness and juiciness. This is very clearly evident even in the cool 2024 vintage”. For the Pinot Noir, this means a wine with pronounced freshness, precise fruit and a slate minerality typical of the Mosel.

Tasting notes: A wine with a Burgundian soul

Tasting notes for the 2024 Pinot Noir are still few and far between, but the available descriptions paint a picture of an exceptional red wine. A forum member on WineBerserkers, who tasted the wine at a tasting event, wrote: “Julian Haart has produced something absolutely stunning in 2024”. Julian Haart’s wines are described as “always extremely well-balanced, with fresh acidity and a austere mineral structure”, and thus resemble the classic Mosel wines that are scarcely produced anymore.

The 2024 Pinot Noir is likely to be characterised by cool, red fruit – notes of sour cherry, raspberry and a hint of wild berries, underpinned by the slate minerality typical of the Ohligsberg. The texture is silky and delicate, with fine, well-integrated tannins. The fresh acidity of this cool vintage lends the wine tension and length.

A wine of great rarity

Julian Haart’s 2024 Pinot Noir is a wine of great rarity. Production is minuscule, whilst demand is enormous – the estate’s wines are among the most sought-after in Germany and are largely reserved for club members. Anyone who receives a bottle of this wine holds not only a rare Pinot Noir from the Moselle in their hands, but also a piece of German wine-growing history – a testament to the distinctive style of a winemaker who is shaping the Moselle far beyond its Riesling tradition.