🍾 Kessler Sekt

Kessler Sekt is a sparkling wine house in Esslingen am Neckar, in Württemberg. According to the house, Georg Christian Kessler (born 1787 in Heilbronn) joined Veuve Clicquot in Reims in 1807 and rose to partner; on 1 July 1826 he and his business partner Heinrich August Georgii founded in Esslingen what the house calls Germany’s oldest Sekt cellar. Since 1869 its home has been the Speyrer Pfleghof by the Esslingen market square, where every bottle is still filled.

According to the house, it makes its Sekt by the traditional method, with the second fermentation in the bottle. The cuvées rest at least nine months on the lees, and the premium and vintage wines several years; the base wines come mainly from Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Its best-known wine is Kessler Hochgewächs.

According to the house’s chronicle, Kessler acquired its first vaulted cellars on the present site in 1832 and became a royal Württemberg court supplier in 1881. The Speyrer Pfleghof, a half-timbered building that the house describes as dating from the 13th century, passed to the house in 1869, and the vaulted cellar beneath it covers just under 2,000 m². The chronicle also records that since May 2005 a new group of shareholders has run the company as an independent Sekt producer, that in 2013 it formed a partnership with the Cavit cooperative cellar in Trento for the supply of base wines, and that since 2016 its new line and vintage wines have been made by the méthode traditionnelle.

Sekt is the German name for quality sparkling wine. Under EU law, quality sparkling wine is made by a first or second alcoholic fermentation, has an excess pressure of at least 3.5 bar from carbon dioxide of the fermentation and a total alcoholic strength of at least 10% vol.

Why it matters to you. “Traditional method” on the label means the bubbles formed in this very bottle, not in a tank. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.