Fitz-Ritter, Pinot Noir

We’ve been beating the German Pinot Noir drum for years now but, beyond the reach of SommSelect, I don’t think the wider world has caught on yet. Fine by me—that means we can have Pinot as authentic, site-specific, and hauntingly complex as Burgundy for a fraction of Burgundy’s price. Fitz-Ritter, in Germany’s sun-soaked Pfalz, provides the latest in a long line of Spätburgunders that have had us questioning just how much quality can be crammed into a bottle as affordable as this.Spicy, smoky, and laden with berry fruit in a lush yet tensile body any Willamette Valley winemaker would kill to achieve, this is seriously world-class juice for Pinot lovers. The value on offer here is simply mind-boggling: Fitz-Ritter is one of Germany’s most historically important estates, farming some of the best terroir on the planet for Burgundian varieties, and they’re somehow offering this wine for a relative pittance. If you want any, I suggest acting fast—the measly 27 cases that arrived stateside w