Haunting perfume on the nose, with concentrated raspberry, strawberry, violet, and Christmas spice. Chocolate and leather too. Complex and ethereal on the palate, with dense yet supple tannins lending both intensity and elegance. Long-lasting on the finish. This wine has an unfettered, beautiful old-school character born of low-tech farming and winemaking rooted in a respect for nature and based apparently on pure intuition.

Wine-related photography is Andreas Durst’s day job. Durst, born in Wuppertal, made a name for himself as the go-to photographer of Medienagenten, a wine marketing agency based in Bad Dürkheim (Pfalz). During his career, he has snapped pictures of, and for, the great and good of German-speaking wine.

In 2008, he moved to Bockenheim in the northern reaches of the Pfalz. It is there that he began making his own wine. His ‘cellar’ was a garage, but his vines (less than a hectare’s worth) lay on a bedrock of pure limestone. The ungrafted Portugieser plantings used for this wine date back to 1906 – they look appropriately gnarled and twisted.

For a more eloquent summary of Andreas Durst than I could ever write, read this by Stephen Bitterolf, the founder of US wine importer Vom Boden.