Lagamba - 'Frauen Power' - Pétnat of Dornfelder - Reinhessen, DE - 2023

Notes from the Winery/Importer

Blend Of Dornfelder and Sylvaner, Ancestral German Style Lambrusco. “JUICY! BEUTIFUL! FRUITY! BOLD! MOST IMPORTANT WINE EVER MADE! EXPLOSIVE! SPARKLING!” No addition of S02 Alanna's wine is F*CKING EPIC. A perfect splash to toast the coming reproductive rights revolution. Spray this red hot action all over the Supreme Court in protest! Chug it with your friends and scream at the top of your lungs with RAGE! This wine is a revolution, it is what we'll be drinking when we win back reproductive rights. It's what we're drinking to get through these low moments. 9%abv so you can drink a couple bottles. Bone dry but juicy AF. Public service announcement: make sure it's stored upright in a cold fridge before opening... can be explosive if not! ---

Notes on the Producer

Alanna's story goes something like this: As a 25-year-old, Alanna moves from her native Canada to Berlin, meets Martin Wörner aka Marto wines at a wine fair there, promises to help him with his next harvest in Rheinhessen, keeps the promise and falls in love with him , falls in love with wine and viticulture, proves to be a super competent winemaker, gets vines for her own wine project, wants to make a German Lambrusco, makes a German Lambrusco . And it's very, very good. - Selection Sauvage Imports

10 questions with Alanna Lagamba

1. Why in the world did you leave beautiful Ontario to go to Germany?

Good question. The reason I left is because at the ripe age of 22 I had finished university and that coincided with a bad breakup, so I said fuck it went to Berlin. I had been once when I was 18, but it was basically to party. I figured at least it was “western.” They had oak milk cappuccinos, and all that. Unlike Rome where you have to drink burnt espresso. I imagined I would stay for a year.

2. How did you get into wine?

When I still lived in Toronto, I had been working at a place called Torroni and they had one orange wine, which was Denavolo, and nobody ever drank it. All the clients were rich white moms and nobody wanted it. I drank most of it myself with my girlfriend. When I decided to move to Germany, I went first to Berlin. I reasoned that Berlin was great because they had a wine scene and I didn’t speak German and nobody speaks German there. Honestly in 2016, the scene wasn’t that great. I worked at a place called Industry Standard. The owner would come in every night and take money from the register. At one point, a debt collector came and expropriated our dish-washing machine. It was a total shit show. Then I moved to Jaja, which was a more established place and pretty much the only place with good wine in Berlin. The way I met Martin was at a wine fair called “WineRush” [laughter]. We’d been drinking all day and a friend of mine was like, “try this guy’s wine”. I wanted to see another part of Germany since I’d never left Berlin so I asked him if I could come for a week and he was like ok, just DM me. But it turned out he didn’t know much about DMs and didn't respond to them. I found out later that he was ignoring me on purpose because according to Martin everyone from Berlin is useless.

3. Can you be more specific about what a Frauen is?

A Frau is a woman. Frauen is a group of women. It roughly translates as “bad ass bitches”. That’s the “high German” of course.

4. What are you drinking right now? Like actually right now.

Like actually right now, I’m drinking nothing because the Tissot chardonnay in my glass just ran out. But now I’m wondering if I should open a bottle of Marto Pinot Gris 2022.

5. But speaking more generally, what do you like to drink when it isn’t the home wine?

If I’m being honest, probably beer. But not nice beer. Shitty beer, sprayed with a lot of roundup [laughter]. Seriously though, I’d drink Laureano Serres - Alicia, too - or Bruno Schueller. I just swapped with Alicia and she sent me 6 bottles of BB. It’s fantastic. I sent her 6 bottles of Cuvée Ops.

6. What is Cuvée Ops?

We have this weird white variety called Canna. It was the ripest thing we harvested. We mixed it with Riesling. In general every year is a shit year for Riesling - too ripe, not ripe enough, lost to frost or whatever - but last year wasn’t. Together they made kind of a riper version of Weiss.
Anyway, Mike Fadem loves collaborations and asked if we could make a wine for him, so it became Cuvee Ops.

7. So this is another one we get a lot from clients. Why are your wines so much better than Martin’s?

Oh my god. That is SO true. In truth, we are pretty involved in each other's winemaking. We share our grapes and our ideas.

8. What’s the future of Vin de Lagamba?

Many things are in the pipeline. I want to be the sparkling Queen of the Rheinhessen. A German Selosse! I've got a Blanc de Noir, a Pinot Noir, that we are going to disgorge this December.

9. What about Dornfelder?

In general, I consider that Rheinhessen is a region for white or white sparkling wines. Dornfelder is the exception. We are bottling soon a Dornfelder, aged in barrel, that is 14.5%. A very rich wine. We called it BIG ASS DORNFELDER.

10. How's the harvest going in 2024?

There’s a lot of Pinot but the rest is rather meagre. It's been a long harvest season but very chill. We pressed all the Pinot directly to make sparkling wine. We haven’t picked any of the Riesling yet. I wonder sometimes if we are being too serious. Our harvest is not very fun. We don’t have any WOOFers. We don’t do YOGA in the vines on Instagram or anything like that.
-Percy Imports