Marto

Martin Wörner runs Marto with his partner Alanna LaGamba from Flonheim, in the western end of Rheinhessen near the Nahe border. His grandfather was among the first in the village to bottle under his own name rather than send fruit to the co-op; his father moved to strawberries and fruit wine in the 1980s; Martin came back to vines, studied at Geisenheim, stage'd at Gut Oggau and at Matassa with Tom Lubbe - Matassa cited as the biggest influence - and took over the family estate in 2016. The first Marto vintage, around 2,500 bottles, landed in 2017.

Today the domaine is roughly 13 hectares on the local sandstone (the famed Flonheimer Sandstein), with limestone and volcanic patches in the mix. The variety list is correspondingly long - Riesling, Silvaner, Müller-Thurgau, Weiss- and Grauburgunder, Spätburgunder, Scheurebe, Bacchus, Würzer, Huxelrebe, Faber, Kerner, Portugieser. Cuttings from Bruno Schueller's Chant des Oiseaux sit alongside them. Farming is organic and biodynamic in practice though not currently certified, with cover crops, sheep grazing, no tillage.

Winemaking is spontaneous, old wood (barrels, foudres, used Mosel casks), no fining, no filtration, no added SO2. The wines are labelled Rheinischer Landwein - deliberately outside the Prädikat / VDP hierarchy. The range is a dense field-blend map: Weiss (skin-contact white), Crazy Crazy (orange pét-nat of Würzer / Huxelrebe / Müller-Thurgau), Manna, Al Dente (Spätburgunder + Grauburgunder, ~11% ABV), a run of single-parcel Rieslings and Pinots, the Kerner-based "Like an Angel's Kiss in Spring", and the B.A.D. and Frauen Power pét-nats. Alanna makes her own wines under Vin de la Gamba.