Marto Crazy Crazy Pet-Nat 2024

Marto is the label of Martin Wörner, a winemaker from the village of Flonheim in the western Rheinhessen. His family has farmed in the area across multiple generations. His grandfather was among the first growers in Flonheim to bottle wine under his own name rather than selling to the local cooperative. Martin's father moved away from winemaking, growing strawberries and selling organic grapes to other producers while maintaining the family vineyards. Martin returned to the estate in 2015 and launched his first vintage under the Marto label in 2017, working from a small cellar beneath the family home that had previously served as a beer tavern.

Before starting Marto, Martin trained with two formative estates. In 2015 he worked at Gut Oggau in Burgenland, Austria, and in 2016 at Matassa in the Roussillon with winemaker Tom Lubbe, an experience he has cited as central to his understanding of aromatic varieties and the primacy of vineyard work over cellar intervention. He has spoken about how his conventional wine school training, focused on chemical correction of perceived faults, was fundamentally at odds with what he encountered at these estates.

The Marto estate has grown from an initial 8 hectares to 13 hectares according to recent accounts, planted to a wide range of varieties including Müller-Thurgau, Scheurebe, Bacchus, Würzer, Kerner, Faber, Riesling, Silvaner, Portugieser, Regent, and newer plantings of Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Noir. Organic farming practices include cover crops of radishes, beetroot, and turnips, sheep grazing between rows, and no tillage. His partner Alanna Lagamba, who makes wines under her own Vin de la Gamba label, contributes to the work at Marto. No additions are used across the entire range: no sulfites, no fining, no filtration.

On Primal Wine, the Marto range includes Marto Weiss Rheinischer Landwein and Marto Manna Rheinischer Landwein. Explore these and more in our best-sellers collection.

Rheinhessen is the largest wine region in Germany by planted area, covering approximately 26,500 hectares across 136 villages in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. It stretches from the Rhine's western bank near Mainz and Worms in the north and east, to the border of the Nahe wine region to the west. The landscape is gentle and agricultural, with vineyards interspersed among fields of grain, vegetables, and orchard fruit. The city of Mainz sits at the region's northeastern corner, with Alzey as the main inland town in the western portion where the village of Flonheim is located.

Soils vary significantly across the region. In the western area around Flonheim, red sandstone and quartzite are dominant, giving wines from this zone a mineral and slightly textural quality. Elsewhere across Rheinhessen, loess, limestone, clay, and marl all contribute to a stylistically diverse wine landscape. The climate is among the driest in Germany, with annual rainfall averaging around 500 millimeters, and warm, elongated summers that allow aromatic varieties to achieve full ripeness. The Nahe hills to the west and the Rhine to the east provide natural shelter, reducing the risk of frost and rain during the growing season.

The aromatic white varieties at the heart of the Marto Crazy Crazy Pet-Nat 2024 blend, Scheurebe, Kerner, and Müller-Thurgau, are deeply embedded in Rheinhessen's viticultural identity. Many of these crossings were developed in the early twentieth century at research stations in the region, with Georg Scheu, working in Alzey, responsible for both Scheurebe and Faberrebe. These varieties were widely planted across Rheinhessen in the postwar period and remain core to the region's character, particularly in the hands of producers who approach them with minimal intervention.

Browse our full German natural wine selection and our sparkling natural wine collection on Primal Wine.