Makalié is a tiny estate founded in 2019 by Max Frölich and Karoline Linka in Müllheim, in the southern Baden region of Germany. Both trained at the University of Geisenheim and seasoned in natural wine cellars across France and Austria, they returned home with a commitment to making wines that feel inseparable from the land itself. The name Makalié reflects that philosophy, created from maka (earth) and lié (connected). Their vineyards lie on steep slopes between the Black Forest, France, and Switzerland and their farming follows biodynamic principles, while in the cellar everything is done gently: hand harvests, spontaneous fermentations, aging in old Burgundian barrels and amphora, no fining or filtration, and only the faintest touch of sulfur at bottling. Production is microscopic, only a few hundred bottles per cuvée, yet the wines are pure and precise, vibrant and elegant, and a deeply personal expression of Baden’s terroirs and a philosophy of connection to the earth.
Paradis is the vineyard Karoline and Max call their paradise garden and their creative playground: a single southeast-facing parcel on the Ölberg in Ehrenstetten, planted in 1962, where the vines share a nature reserve with old fruit trees, wild herbs, and flowers. It is a field blend, mostly müller-thurgau with gutedel and a small share of spätburgunder, rooted in loess and loam over Jurassic limestone and marl. The grapes are destemmed and left on their skins in amphora for nine months, with no punch-downs and no pressing, and the wine then rests three more months in stainless steel. The couple are careful to call it a reductive skin-contact wine and not an orange one. Only 380 bottles of the 2023 were made.
Lifted and light on its feet, the 2023 Paradis opens with cascading elderflower, lychee, pear, and quince, with sencha and cardamom arriving as it warms. The palate is spare and chalky, with a salty lightness and the fine tannin of those long months on skins, which gives grip without bitterness. There is very little wine like it, and very little of it. Drink through 2029.
