HENSEL: Meet My Ikarus

By Stuart Pigott - last revision: 09.10.26

OMG IT FLOATS!

Is anti-gravity making the futuristic object next to the airfield of Bad Dürkheim/Pfalz float? 

Is it one of the UAPs the Pentagon just released blurry videos of?

OFFICIAL STATEMENT:

We can neither confirm or deny any of these things. 

MOVE ALONG QUICKLY! NO PHOTOS!

Yes, there's something strangely beautiful next to the airfield of Bad Dürkheim/ Pfalz and it is floating. So, for the sake of our readers - we take the risks, you do the reading in the safety of your homes! - I stepped inside it couple of times this year, and found Thomas and Alexandra Hensel, a winemaking couple who told me that this is their Wine Showroom. And they really show and sell wine there. I saw them doing it!  

The Hensels and I go back a lot further than the first sightings of their Wine Showroom a deacade ago. In the autumn of 2003 I was late taking the Young German Winemakers (YGW) seriously, but when I started doing YGW I was almost immediately addicted to this powerful drug.  I said it was all an exercise in Gonzo journalism, and present the chapter of my book Wilder Wein (Scherz Verlag, Frankfurt, 2006) or Wild Wine, called I know it’s only Rock ‚n‘ Roll, but I like it as proof. 400 witnesses can tell you what actually happened on the evening in Heidelberg on the 17th June 2005, but first what about today?

Well, depending on who you ask Hensel wines and the Hensels are either the definition of the 21st century Pfalz wine industry or no longer cool enough to count, because the erstwhile YGWs are now in their mid-fifties.Whatever you do DON’T be middle-aged! Let's face it the German wine scene is good at unconscious ageism. But this website rejects all that, instead trying to take every wineaker and their wines as we find them. So, let's have a look at Thomas and Alex's wines, starting with the GLAMOROUS YET DOWN-TO-EARTH Cuvée Höhenflug Rotwein 2022. A few years ago I gave a friend in the Bordeaux wine industry a bottle of an earlier vintage, and when she served it to colleagues blind they were all convinced that it must be a modern red Bordeaux with a price tag several times the actual price. Whoa!

And then, most extraordinarily and exceptionally of all there's IKARUS, an almost impenetrably dark colouredred wine that's made from the rare Cabernet Cubin grape, of which the 2000 vintage was the first I tasted. When I first tasted it at 3 years of age Thomas described it to me as, "rouge brutal!" The 2020 and 2022 vintages are no less dense, proving that really big can be really beautiful, but they're more approachable as young wines than the 2000 was. I promise you, nothing else produced in Germany tastes like this!

Yes, some of their cheaper whites are a bit straight up and down, but they all express Thomas and Alex's belief that, "wine must be fun, and it can be sexy!" Yes, just take a look at how I gave a Graburgunder 95 points. When did that last happen? Dry Pinot Gris that lights my fire are certainly rare, and the best thing about that wine is the stylistic originality. It's light years removed from regular German Grauburgunder.

Behind all this lies a very paractical and pragmatic approach. In Germany the word "pragmatism" reeks of faule Kompromisse or rotten compromises, which is a speciality of contemporary German politics, so Thomas asked me to qualify the word. But, from the English-speaking perspective neither explanation or qualification is needed. One example of Thomas's pragmatism is how he does the yield reduction for wines like the top reds I mentioned above using a leaf-pulling machine powered by pressureized air. Why not use human hands? Because it's increasingly difficult to find people who can do this work reliably, it takes longer and it's much more expensive. The result is Cuvée Höhenflug Rotwein costs just Euro 19.90 direct from Thomas and Alex.

Now put fun, sexy and pragmatic in one package - something completely impossible for most German-speakers to imagine - and you have the essence of Thomas and Alex. I think grasping this is the key to understanding how they can be so successful - the floating Wine Showroom is a hit! - yet how they aren't widely regarded as mega-cool. You see, there's nothing extreme about them; no hint of German absolutism. Thank Goodness, because there's way too much of that in the wine scene here! Along with the fetishism you find everywhere on Planet Wine, as if Keller was the only exciting German wine producers, and everything Keller must be red hot.

But to fully understand the Hensels we have to turn the clock back to the 17th June, 2005. Now where is that time machine?

It was the late morning of the 17th just after Thomas Hensel, Karsten Peter (now of Castel Peter in Bad Dürkheim and Gut Hermannsberg in the Nahe) and Markus Schneider (yes, the Markus Schneider of the eponymous winery in Ellerstadt/Pfalz) had just delivered the wine for that evening to Schloss Heidelberg. Yes, I helped them lug all the cases, because you need a stack of wine for 400 paying guests - the tickets sold out in a couple of hours. We had stopped at the edge of Downtown Mannheim to pick up a coffee on our way back to the Pfalz. Suddenly, we spotted a row of posters for concerts by Maria Carey, Anastacia, Lenny Kravitz, David Copperfield and our own event that evening. OMG!

Although the beginning of the event was already exciting, once the music a hord of young women - wine groupies - stormed the stage and the Space Shuttle took off. WE HAVE LIFT OFF! Maybe we were only floating a fraction of a millimeter above the stage, but there was no doubt we'd reached geostationary orbit around Planet Wine. I could not have been more fully part of the story than at that moment, and that’s what Gonzo journalism is all about: becoming one with the subject.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't physically become one with any of those wine groupies, but helping pour the trio's Vintage Port style Sex Machine 2003 into groupie mouths direct from a double magnum bottle certainly brought us damned close on a spiritual level. And that evening was also my first experience of what I call Wine Stadium Rock. That expression that didn't catch on although I've been there a bunch of times and it refers to something very real that requires a minimum of 200 people, but has no upper limit.

The next morning, wearing sunglasses and looking seriously trashed, Thomas said to me, „I mean, we’re not special people, but I think…at least for a few hours… we were stars. At least, that’s the only way I can explain what happened.“ Now there are rumours that the event is going to be repeated next summer. Great God of Wine, please come when we need you. We've reserved backstage passes for you and your entire entourage!  

P.S. Together with Brend Howell, Alex Hensel played a major role in designing this website, so in honour of her I reproduce the stunning logo she designed for us. Scroll down further for the rest of the story!

HENSEL SPECTACULAR !

Hensel  Pfalz  Grauer Burgunder  GB Höhenflug  2024 - ??% / Creamy-dreamy, but with a deep base of fine tannins, this mouthfilling dry Pinot Gris rich and beautifully balanced. Very long, seductive and well structured finish. Should age well, if you can resist it now! 95 (SP)

Hensel  Pfalz  Cuvée Höhenflug Rotwein  2022 - 13.5% / Glamorous, yet down-to-earth like Mick Jagger, this stellar German red wine stands on a high stage and anyone who likes Bordeaux-inspired reds will look up to this. Still very young, but give this a moment and it will rock your world. A cuvée of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Syrah. 95 (SP)

Hensel  Pfalz  Ikarus Feels Like Heaven  2020 - 13% / Incredibly deep elderberry fruit, but also notes of other wild berries and herbs, savoury, meaty and slightly sooty. Still very young, thanks to the huge fine tannins, but there’s nothing overdone about this enormously concentrated red wine. In fact, the finish is cool and very straight. Pure Cabernet Cubin. 96 (SP)

NOTE: Only for paying subscribers the notes for all 24 wines tasted are below.