Classification
The whole of the Stein is not a single Grosse Lage. Under the VDP hierarchy the umbrella site is classified VDP.ERSTE LAGE, and Bürgerspital, Juliusspital and Staatlicher Hofkeller all label their standard Stein Silvaner and Riesling at that level. Grosse Lage status belongs to top parcels carved out within it. The Stein-Berg is registered by the VDP as a VDP.GROSSE LAGE, and both Staatlicher Hofkeller and Juliusspital bottle a Würzburger Stein-Berg Silvaner Grosses Gewächs from it. The Stein-Harfe, named for the harp-like fan of its rows and paths in the heart of the slope, is a second VDP.GROSSE LAGE and a monopoly of Bürgerspital. The accurate reading is a first-growth site holding two grand-cru parcels, rather than a grand cru in its own right.
Geography and Geology
The vineyard climbs from around 210 to 285 metres, with a south to southeast aspect that gathers light and heat, and gradients reaching up to roughly 65 percent on the steepest western sections. Würzburg's setting gives the slope an almost Mediterranean warmth, buffered by the river below and sheltered from cold northerly and easterly winds. The bedrock is weathered Muschelkalk, the yellow-grey shell limestone of the Triassic sea, threaded in places with clay and loam and covered by thin, stony, humus-poor topsoil. Staatlicher Hofkeller describes its Stein-Berg parcel as sparse, gypsum-rich keuper laced with veins of alabaster, a soil that restrains the vine and feeds the wine's minerality.
The Wines
Silvaner is the signature grape and the most planted variety on the Stein, joined by Riesling, Weissburgunder and, among the reds, Spätburgunder. The limestone leaves its mark as a saline, almost salty minerality with a long, taut finish. Bürgerspital calls its Stein Silvaner complex and polarising, and Hofkeller notes pear and green-herb tones over that salty core. These are wines built for the table and for age, dry in the modern Franken idiom and firmly regional in character.
History
The Stein sits at the origin of much German wine lore. Bürgerspital, founded in the early fourteenth century, records the first Silvaner planted in the site in 1665 and is regarded as the birthplace of the Bocksbeutel, the flat green flagon that still carries Franken's best bottles. A wine from the Stein was among Goethe's favourites. Most famous of all is the 1540 Steinwein, drawn from the legendary hot vintage of that year and still held, sealed, in the Bürgerspital cellars. A bottle was opened in London in 1961, when Hugh Johnson was among those who tasted it at 421 years of age, one of the oldest wines ever drunk.