This is only our second Konni & Evi offer; the first one from over a year ago was two-plus years in the making.

This is an extremely limited offer. We hope these sell out with some haste; these are meditative wines to open and enjoy through the holidays or during the winter months.

Yes, this offer is an absurdist passion play - an expression of our honest desire simply to reveal the most fascinating edges of the wine world. Parts of the wine world that don't have an easy financial logic, yet deserve attention nonetheless.

Konni & Evi are in many ways heroes, literally saving the old vines of Saale-Unstrut, vines that tell a tale older than “East Germany,” older than the communism and the degradations of the former GDR. They tell a tale of the soil.

Yet this offer is not only a passion play.

This cold landscape, on the edge of the 51st parallel and on the edge of ripeness, offers a singular aesthetic that is very hard to reproduce anywhere. All three of these wines have an amazing density, an almost weighty, vinous quality, as if mineral itself was made liquid - and yet all of the wines, bone dry, clock in at a staggeringly low 9.5% alcohol. The wines do see skin contact and certainly could be called "orange wines," yet there is a clarity and rigor, a transparency and linear finesse that transcends this rather basic and ubiquitous-feeling category.

These wines are different. There is a strong energy in these wines, yet it is calm and expansive; it has little (nothing?) to do with the whiplash, razor's edge of many cool-climate German Rieslings. The wines of Konni & Evi slowly evolve and open up over many days, revealing new facets and flavors.

Because there are truly no precedents nor context for this region or these specific wines, as we did before we can throw out some like-minded reference points. Those of you who were able to grab a few bottles of Jonas Dostert might find something interesting here, yet the wines of Konni & Evi are denser and more compact. The Silvaners of Stefan Vetter in Franconia are comparable, yet they show sharper acids and more cut. The wines of Alice and Olivier de Moor, with their near-tangible acidity, their polished density, have something in common with what is happening here.

The Silvaner is the lightest of them all; it is sharper than the 2019, brighter and more citric, though it has a wonderful floral quality, all resinous and waxy.

The Blauer Silvaner - a Silvaner with a unique blue-tinged skin - feels the most joyous and open, almost provocative with tart red fruits, animal fur, wet tobacco; it is seamless with a bright, cleansing finish.

The "Alte Terrassen" is, as the name suggests, sourced from an old terrace. This is a mixed parcel with Chasselas (about 70%) and Silvaner (about 30%) planted in the 1930s. This is one of Konni's favorite parcels and favorite wines, dense and meaty and reductive in its early youth. He says it always reminds him of a sparkling wine without the bubbles. This is the most brooding and structured, even tannic of all the wines. It is inward looking, with a very subtle but persistent minerality. Have no fear keeping any of these bottles open for many days; this wine however almost demands this level of patience.

All of these wines are worth the indulgence; they are soulful and honest.

We've included a short history about Konni & Evi below. There is also a link below to an article on their unknown region, Saale-Unstrut, by vom Boden.

A short history: Konrad (we can call him Konni) was born in Saale-Unstrut. He met Eva-Maria (we can call her Evi) and a parcel of vines less than a third of a hectare in size convinced them to begin their winemaking/history project. What’s important here is not the size of this specific parcel (small), but the vine age (old).

The first parcel they bought was planted some 20 years before East Germany existed, at a ridiculously high density, somewhere around 10,500 vines per hectare. This is the preindustrial texture of viticulture, making no concessions for machines. This stands in stark contrast to the vineyards planted during the GDR, where every concession was made to the machine. (For those of you who want to dig deeper into the fascinating viticultural history of this region, click here to read a short history of Saale-Unstrut and Sachsen on the vom Boden site.)

In the last five years Konni & Evi have managed to gather 18 more old-vine parcels. Keep in mind all of these parcels, in total, equal only about 3.5 hectares.

Konni & Evi are farming each and every parcel organically and biodynamically. During harvest they use a simple basket press; it can only process about 600 liters at a time. Press times are normally between 20 and 24 hours, just so you have a sense of the process here. Or at least, at the very vaguest level, you have a sense of how human this all is; how much work it all is.

After fermentation, if they find that a barrel is too reductive, they may decide not to top it up. With the Silvaners especially, a flor may develop – the yeast that forms on the surface of a wine, most famously occurring in Spain’s Jerez. Konni muses that this happens because the alcohols are so low in the wine, though he feels like something about Silvaner lends itself to this flor.

The whole process is a fascinating play of reduction and oxidation: of going inward while pulling outward.

To make things even cooler, Konni and Evi use, exclusively, very dense oak barrels made with wood from the Harz, a forest about an hour north of their vineyards. The barrels are made by the last cooper in Saale-Unstrut, a man by the name of Carsten Romberg. They have a variety of sizes, from 200 up to 600 liters.

The project, the mission, the wines are beautiful. This is exactly the specificity and focus we want to celebrate and promote through Source Material.

This offer is now closed. If you need help finding the wines please email orders@sourcematerialwine.com.