The Fürst family has tended vines in Bürgstadt since at least 1638, but the estate's modern story begins in 1979, when Paul and Monika Fürst took over a 1.5-hectare mixed farm and began restoring the steep, terraced parcels on the slopes above the Main. Long before German pinot noir had an international audience, Paul was trading notes with growers in Burgundy, Oregon, and Switzerland's Bündner Herrschaft, and Jancis Robinson would later call him “an acknowledged Pinot magician in Germany.” His son Sebastian trained at Geisenheim and in Burgundy, joined in 2007, and has run the 21-hectare estate with his wife Isabell since 2018; father and son have each been named German Winemaker of the Year. The vines grow on Buntsandstein, an iron-rich red sandstone laid down some 250 million years ago that holds the day's heat into the night, and they are farmed organically without certification and fed with compost made on the estate. In the cellar, fermentations run on indigenous yeasts in open-top vats, and every red is bottled without fining or filtration.

Centgrafenberg is the family's home ground. Once held by the Archbishops of Mainz, it climbs at up to 40 percent above the little Erf river at the edge of Bürgstadt, and the Fürst winery sits in its heart. The family's 3.2 hectares here were planted between 1978 and 2006, and yields for the Grosses Gewächs are held to 35 hectoliters per hectare. The 2023 fermented with roughly 80 percent whole clusters and aged 16 to 18 months in barrels, half of them new. It earned 97 points from James Suckling and 96 from Stephan Reinhardt of the Wine Advocate.

Black cherry and blackberry open onto graphite, tomato leaf, black tea, and a wisp of smoke, drifting toward blueberry with air. The palate is silky and concentrated, with ripe, very fine tannins and a saline edge, and the finish stays tightly coiled in youth. Give it time (or at least a long decant): best enjoyed 2029 through 2045.