An old Mosel barrel, around 90 years old, in the sixteenth-century cellar of Weingut Günther Steinmetz in Brauneberg.

The Fuder is the typical Mosel barrel, about 1,000 liters, used for fermenting or maturing wine or both. The oak traditionally comes from the local forests in the neighboring hills of the Eifel or Hunsrück. Each barrel was precisely measured with the exact liters branded on one end.

Besides the traditional Fuder, cellars often were stocked with Halbfuder (“half-ton,” holding circa 500 liters) or Doppelfuder (“double-ton”) and even smaller barrels in addition to much larger ones, such as 35-hectoliter tons, which were mainly used for storing wine. The oak Fuder allows for some oxygenation and is an ideal vessel for fermenting Riesling, especially in a deep, cool, vaulted Mosel cellar. One Fuder is around 1,300 bottles. Today more and more producers, especially with modern installations, have gone to stainless-steel tanks, for they are easier to clean, maintain, and control temperature. Among the producers in our portfolio, Stein, Clemens Busch, Günther Steinmetz, and Peter Lauer still use Fuder along with tanks. Other notable advocates of Fuder, whom we admire, include Hofgut Falkenstein, Ansgar Clüsserath, and Weiser-Künstler.

Before the advent of pumps, tradesmen, known as Schröter, specialized in moving the heavy (back then) hand-split oak barrels in and out of cellars—an arduous task. The Fuder and, in some instances, cases of wine were sold and transported by horse- or ox-drawn carts as well as by ship or train. In the 1920s or ’30s domaine-bottling was less common than today.

Local coopers (Küfer) on the Mosel, Saar, and Ruwer have practically become obsolete, despite a movement back to Fuder among some quality-conscious producers. Carl von Schubert at Maximin Grünhaus, for example, recently had some new Fuder (neatly painted with green trim) made from his own Grünhaus forest by an old cooper based in the nearby Ruwer village of Kasel. His Pinot Blanc goes in the new Fuder the first few vintages to leech out the wood flavors. Otherwise, finding good used barrels has become difficult. They need to be properly checked so as not to impart musty off-smells or -flavors in the wine. And some producers’ barrels have a taint from the use of sorbic acid, once popular in killing yeasts, which gives off a flowery odor, often described as geraniums, and should never be used in making wine.

Another Fuder in the cellar of Weingut Günther Steinmetz.

Certain Mosel producers prefer—even for their Rieslings—smaller secondhand (rarely new) wooden barrels, such as 550- to 600-liter demi-muids or 228-liter Burgundian pièces, because they are easier to handle and better for smaller volumes.

On the Rhine the standard 1,200-liter oval barrels are called Stück, which also come in the approximately 600-liter Halbstück or 2,400-liter Doppelstück. Two of the best-known coopers in Europe are Hösch, a small cooperage in the Nahe specializing in handmade barrels, and the Austrian company Stockinger. At Weingut Dr. Siemens on the Saar, for instance, they have from each cooperative both Stück and Doppelstück.

A few years ago the excellent Arte, a Franco-German culture channel, did a special report on the non-profit organization Fromages de Terroirs and their fight to protect what is left of local unpasteurized French cheese: “Our food has lost the human touch. ‘Nutrition’ has become the watchword while flavours are becoming uniformly insipid.” Fromages de Terroirs was founded in Lyon in 2001 by Véronique Richez-Lerouge, an ex-journalist and attachée, who reacted against attacks aimed at traditional cheese made from raw milk. She has since gone on to give the views of the producers and to inform the general French public about their heritage, including launching eight years ago Journée Nationale de Fromage (National Cheese Day) and four years ago From’Girls Calender, an independent initiative.

The retro girlie pop-art calenders are done in a 1960s’ style reminiscent of the American artist Mel Ramos. A scantly clad dairymaid adorns a particular cheese each month:

Two images are contrasted: that of a sexy and sensual woman and that of cheese, a masculine and earthy product. The idea is to appreciate that cheese made with raw milk can form part of an up-to-date way of life and to realise that living produce can teach us a lot about our country. Holding on to our local producers, encouraging small firms to develop real cheeses, teaching the young to tell a real cheese from a synthetic one…. This is what sustainable development is all about. Preserving local production enriches rural life and helps to conserve the social fabric.

At Mosel Wine Merchant we like French cheese and wine and sympathize with this cause and are also trying to support the local and traditional small wine producers in the Mosel River Valley. Although there’s no dogma on our part, we tend to prefer wines, for example, that are fermented with wild rather than inoculated yeasts.

The 2007 From’Girls Calender still hangs in my kitchen. I better order the new one. Ever since meeting a French girl, named Lydie, during my studies in Austin, Texas in the early nineties, my favorite cheese is Comté. (Back then, I often bought some and other cheese with a baguette from Texas French Bread.) Her family, from the Jura, supplied the milk for Comté, and I’ll never forget on my subsequent visit to Lyon, her making me a sandwich from cheese she procured from home. Years later I was fortunate to have a good friend from Fontainebleau and later a French girlfriend who taught me more about the different sorts of cheese in France.

As a follow-up to our post in April, please click here for more information on Pro Mosel, a citizen’s initiative against the controversial project B50/High Mosel Bridge, which had been previously shelved for years, but is now under construction. Various wine writers (Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, and Stuart Pigott) have protested against the decision to build the massive highway bridge, and several celebrated Middle Mosel wine estates (like Dr. Loosen, Joh. Jos. Prüm, or Willi Schaefer) have spoken out against it, too.

The aforementioned estates all have vines in the area where the bridge would be built high above the Mosel River. Curiously, the developers chose a rather wide point in the valley to do this. And it should be noted that it wouldn’t span directly over the famous hillside vineyards of Zeltingen, Wehlen, Graach, or Bernkastel, as some report, but rather run parallel on the plateau above. (See maps on Pro Mosel’s website.) This entails cutting down some of the forest that supplies the vineyards water and would ruin a pristine area for hiking between Traben-Trarbach and Bernkastel-Kues.

Various critics, insiders, and winegrowers feel, however, that the recent press and demonstrations have come much too late and only bring negative publicity to the entire region and its wines. Although many of us are against the building of this monstrous and costly bridge—an eyesore for the heart of the Middle Mosel, between Ürzig and Zeltingen—it remains to be seen what can be done to stop it, besides signing the petition. Moreover, previous protests (going back ten or more years) failed and had little support, as the Rhineland-Palatinate and local governments, in addition to the courts, have favored (and upheld) the project. One keen observer said that the initiative lacks an organizer who has the political prowess and can draw in and rally the locals and the less well-known vintners.

What also seems to be lost by the press or even the famous wine growers’ association, the VDP, is the much bigger crisis that’s affecting all the Mosel region, namely the loss of viticulture on the Mosel’s steep slate slopes.

Since the beginning of this month you can follow us on Twitter (@moselwine). Click here.

After some deliberation we decided it’s a good platform to interact and network with clients, colleagues, and viewers. It also allows us to write short, quick posts and to link back to our blog for more thorough write-ups. So, we’re now part of the chatter.

[philosophy]

“Riesling for advanced learners” means…

1. Stylish wines with elegance, not too alcoholic, but with depth and concentration is the goal of our traditional work in steep slate hillsides.

2. A natural, organic wine production—in the vineyard and beyond is essential.

3. Riesling as passion. The noble white grape plays for us the sensory keyboard of soil, climate, and upbringing. Here originates an individual, first-class range from one single grape variety.

4. Real wines mean for us: one vineyard, one character. We harvest our best parcels separate and let them ferment with their natural yeasts. Nature is the composer, we are the musicians.

5. A spontaneous fermentation with wild, untamed yeasts is risky, though infinitely exciting.

6. In regard to quality levels we think logical and simple. Our wines are arranged in three distinct categories: light-bodied wines from the Saar Valley, typical site-specific wines from around Ayl, and genuine terroir wines from our best parcels.

This was translated from Weingut Lauer’s website. Click here. For Point Two I kept to the original text and left the word “organic,” even though Lauer is not officially organic. The Lauers avoid artificial fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides. They do use, however, non-organic treatments against mildew when necessary. Florian Lauer feels that the use of copper, which is toxic, is more harmful than certain fungicides. The three distinct categories under Point Six are similar to Burgundy with regional (i.e., Saar Riesling) wines, “villages” (from sites near Ayl), and then the “premier” or “grand crus” (e.g., from pre-1971 names within today’s Kupp, such as “Unterstenbersch” and “Stirn.”)

In the current issue of The Art of Eating, Dan Melia was asked to write a short piece on Ulli Stein’s manifesto, which he had translated (with the assistance of the wine critic David Schildknecht) and posted on our blog early this year.

Since publishing the plea, Ulli has since been able to save old Riesling vines from being cut down by retiring grape-growers in his village of St. Aldegund, namely in the site called Himmelreich. Various producers along the Mosel and local press have taken notice. Even the well-known British wine author Jancis Robinson asked to republish Dan’s translation on her website. All of this has been good to see, even if much more needs to be done to save precious old vines in steep slate sites from thorny shrubs, such as the blackberry.

Alcohol is only 12.5% by volume for the 2007 Pinot Noir Buntsandstein, which is in a heavier bottle à la Romanée-Conti, for Enderle & Moll received a special deal on these. For the soon-to-be-bottled 2008, which is fruitier and ideal for quaffing slightly chilled, they’ll move to standard Burgundian bottles. This has been our favorite Pinot Noir discovery from Germany and perfectly complements our selection of Mosel Rieslings, not to mention that these guys fit our mentality and close-knit group of winegrowers.

Last night I brought along a bottle of 2007 Maison Pierre Overnoy (Emmanuel Houillon) Chardonnay from the Jura region to my friend Stefan’s place to watch the Champions League final between Bayern and Inter. It was purchased by a wine-maker friend of ours at the domaine. The wine already had an orange color and an oxidized taste—a far cry from the excellent 2001 (clear, crisp, and clean) and the very good ’04, which Dany Bertin-Denis of Les Enfants Rouge once decanted and poured alongside the Savagnin. In fact, I even preferred the more opulent 2006 Chardonnay from Overnoy to the ’07. Fortunately, we had other wines to drink, including a newly bottled 2008 Pinot Noir from Günther Steinmetz. This has only 12% alcohol and is quite closed down after bottling, but so impressive. I’ve always been critical of Steinmetz’s Pinot Noirs, but his 2007s marked a change in style. And the 2008 Pinots might be his best ever.

Today, I’m taking the train from Trier to Winningen to partake in Knebel’s 2009 vintage presentation.

Below is our vintage 2009 summary for the Mosel-Saar region:

A frosty January was followed by a warm April and an early budbreak. In June, many areas of the Mosel region had an uneven and long flowering, resulting in tiny shot berries (often good for quality), but reducing yields. This was due to strong rains and a drop in temperatures followed by mild humid conditions with fears of peronospora (downy mildew), which affected Riesling in certain communes of the Middle Mosel. By September, it became drier and warmer, ideal for the grapes’ ripening (especially old vines with their deeper roots in the steep slate slopes), leading up to an early harvest in mid-October under sunny skies and cool nights. Most vintners, who were selective with multiple passes in the vineyards, picked at ideal ripeness levels, despite fears of rot, and finished by the beginning of November before the rains came. Botrytis was minimal. The healthy Riesling grapes had marked aromatics and the subsequent fermenting musts were remarkably fruity. The vintage has more similarities with 2005 than 2008. The latter is a leaner, classic year with pronounced acidity, and the 2009s have more fruitiness from the start. On the Saar, there was frost in October, and only a band of sites nearer the river were unaffected and kept their leaves.  Nonetheless, the best Saar Rieslings and certain wines of the Mosel, often from side valleys, have a noticeable mineral tension, between fruit and acidity. It’s indeed an excellent vintage.

Photo: Harvesters climbing up Peter Lauer’s site in Schonfels on the Saar, one of the few vineyards in the area that kept its leaves after the October 2009 frost.

An astonished Philippe Noyé (also known as “Monsieur Loire”) twirls his glass at our first annual Mosel Wine Merchant tasting held in Paris at Macéo on September 10, 2007.

Monsieur Noyé is the longtime agent of the Foucault brothers at Clos Rougeard, as well as Anselme Selosse in Champagne among other vignerons outside the Loire. (Having cellared and drunk several bottles of Clos Rougeard over the years, in particular, the 1997 and ’99 Les Poyeux, and the 2001 village, the wines are indeed special.)

Our friend Tobias Hannemann took this amusing shot at the tasting, which included other Parisian wine agents, such as the lovely Françoise Vadé-Felon, in addition to shop owners Juan Sanchez of La Dernière Goutte and Marc Sibard of Caves Augé.

It was great to see an appreciation for our selections among connoisseurs and to have on hand well-known French journalists and Mosel wine lovers Michel Bettane and Eric Riewer taste with us.

Although no one ever noticed, I realized on my own that I had mistakenly captioned this photo from Tobias on page 27 of our Catalog 2009 as Bremmer Calmont. It’s actually Stein’s revered St. Aldegunder Palmberg-Terrassen.

Stairs up one of the many old drywall terraces at Palmberg that need constant upkeep, as in other Lower Mosel vineyards, such as Winninger Röttgen, where the Knebels have some of their best parcels. Yet, much of the Lower Mosel (also known as the Terrassenmosel) have terraced sites, like the Mittelrhein nearby. Sadly, many vineyards in both regions are being left abandoned and bramble grows there instead of vines.

On the Saar, the Lauers saved an old-vine, terraced plot at Schonfels, which slopes precipitously above a high cliff and down towards the river.

Before Flurbereingung (remodeling of vineyards), the Middle Mosel, Saar, and Ruwer had more terraced hillsides than today. Fortunately, several of our winegrowers, including Clemens Busch and Stefan Steinmetz (Weingut Günther Steinmetz), have been instrumental in saving old Riesling vines or re-cultivating steep slate slopes in their respective communes.

As of August 1, 2009, the production of Strohwein (straw wine) in Germany has been allowed according to the new EU wine regulations, but not using the German word. After the German straw wine ban, the Austrians trademarked the term. Ulli Stein, who had been alone in contesting the ban since the autumn of 2001, discussed this point with his lawyer and the Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of Viticulture, Hendrik Hering. Ulli’s proposal to use the local expression “Striehween,” from the Moselle-Franconian dialect, as a trademark was accepted. Ulli has since patented the name with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA).

In their last and long letter, dated November 16, 2009, the Ministry of Viticulture informed Ulli that his Striehween belongs to a unique category of wine from dried grapes. (In French, the term is vin de paille, most famous in the Jura region.)

According to the law, the Stein brothers cannot label the region (Mosel) or use the terms Erzeugerabfüllung (bottled by the producer) or Weingut (wine estate). At least, the vintage and grape variety are permitted. So, look out for this wonderful specialty next month! It’ll be labeled: “2009er Riesling Striehween, Gebrüder Stein, Bullay/Mosel, Wein aus Deutschland.”

Last Friday, Clemens Busch and I traveled to Paris on a beautiful blue-sky morning to pour the following day a selection of his wines at Juan Sanchez’s La Dernière Goutte in St. Germain. Mark Williamson of Macéo and Willi’s Wine Bar joined us for the tasting and later lunch at Fish La Boissonerie. It was a great turnout at the shop with a number of leading Parisian wine journalists and trade jam-packed in the shop, and the tasting event continued until the early evening.

Among the favorite wines of the crowd was Clemens’s 2008 Riesling “vom grauen Schiefer” trocken (dry), which sold well on Saturday and comes—as the name implies—“from gray slate” in a core section of the hillside, below the castle and near the vineyard sign “Pündericher Marienburg.” The tasters could relate to this style of wine that Clemens likes to make, namely a dry Riesling with backbone and transparency. “Vom grauen Schiefer” has 7.2 grams per liter residual sugar (RS).

Juan also had on offer the vibrant 2008 Riesling “vom roten Schiefer” (“from red slate”)—our “Wine of the Week.” The grapes come from parcels in two red-slate vineyards: one is the Rothenpfad sector of Marienburg, above the viaduct. The well-weathered soil here makes for fine and elegant wines. The other plots are in Pündericher Nonnengarten, a single vineyard further downstream past the castle in a richer red soil that gives stronger and earthier wines. Unlike in 2006 or 2007, “vom roten Schiefer” 2008 has less residual sugar (ca. 11 rather than 20  g/l RS) and more cut. The wine truly reflects the vintage character (low alcohol, good acidity) and has the typical spicy, herbal flavors associated with red slate.

The Buschs’ carefully-tended vines grow in healthy soils (organic since the early eighties), and the wines are genuine expressions of their terroir, with varying plots, expositions, and slate soils. Different from certain winegrowers, Clemens lets his wines do the talking. He’s refreshingly modest and good-natured, though ardent and avoids the dogma and rhetoric prevalent among some, including those in the natural wine movement—both winegrowers and followers alike. He’s an abiding, conscientious winegrower who is actually in his vineyard doing the work himself, that is, by hand in steep slate sites (no tractors here!) as well as in his cellar as wine-maker.

Photograph by Andreas Durst.

Dan said Clemens’s hands look like baseball catcher’s mitts. They’re strong  from a lifelong of hard work. A few years ago on a train ride past Pünderich from Frankfurt Airport, I’ll never forget looking up to see Clemens driving wooden stakes down into the red slate of Rothenpfad, while his vineyard team looked on. Few winegrowers go through the trouble of replanting in the steepest sections, where only the labor-intensive and time-honored training of the vine with stakes is possible, much less do the backbreaking work themselves.

On our drive to Paris, Clemens and I talked about different issues, and he questions the rampant use of copper among some of his organic and biodynamic colleagues, especially in France, where controls seem lax. So much is talked about in regard to the use of sulfur, but what about copper, which is a heavy metal? It reminds me of the lack of discussion about nuclear power in France and the dangers it poses.

Clemens uses neither pure culture yeasts, enzymes, nor fining agents  in the cellar, especially if he’s putting in all the arduous work with biodynamic treatments in the vineyard. His wines ferment spontaneously for a long time on the lees, sometimes over a year or more. (One Fuder of 2005 Fahrlay took 30 months to finish fermentation!) He’s one of the last to bottle on the Mosel. Most properties are already offering their new vintage in the spring, and Clemens doesn’t even bottle the majority of his top wines until August or September. Although he would like to get by without adding any sulfur, he uses low doses, because his wines would otherwise taste poorly and oxidize more quickly without it. Wine should be about pleasure foremost, not following trends or appeasing the cult of non-sulfur wines.

The best dry Rieslings from the VDP-designated “Erste Lage” (“First Growth”) Marienburg are called “Grosses Gewächs” (labeled “GG”). Clemens made three different GGs from his various parcels within Marienburg in ’08: Marienburg, Rothenpfad, and Falkenlay. The latter two are old-named sections within Marienburg, curiously allowed on the labels by the authorities despite the 1971 German Wine Law. (The ’71 Wine Law sadly disallows the use of thousands of former site-specific names, which are similar to the northern Rhône or Burgundian climats.) His straight Marienburg GG, for example, is from an area known as Treppchen, an old place-name that cannot be put on his label. He could have declared 2008 Fahrlay (a site with predominantly blue slate) as GG, too, because it also fermented naturally under the requisite 9 grams per liter residual sugar, the upper limit for trocken on the Mosel.

Pre-2008 vintage “vom grauen Schiefer” was labeled as his two-star Spätlese trocken from Pündericher Marienburg. Now in the VDP, his non-GG dry Rieslings can no longer carry either a Prädikat (e.g., Spätlese) or a single-vineyard (Marienburg) designation on the label, even if the grapes come strictly from Marienburg, such as his Kabinett trocken. In other words, the VDP’s idea is to do away with Prädikats for dry Riesling and to only have the top bottlings, the GGs, with the “First Growth” site mentioned on the label. This forces producers to declassify or rename dry Rieslings that are not GG. For example, Clemens’s dry Kabinett will lose the Prädikat in the 2009 vintage, even though all the grapes come from a high, steep section of Marienburg with gray-slate soils.

In addition to Clemens’s 2007 Auslese “vom roten Schiefer,” Juan had selected as a fourth wine the stunning first vintage of 2008 Marienburg GG “Rothenpfad.” This comes from the oldest vines in the sector Rothenpfad, including the site known as Weissenberg.

We also had on hand a number of extra samples, including his ethereal 2008 Marienburg Auslese Goldkapsel (auction wine) and 2008 Fahrlay and 2008 Fahrlay-Terrassen, the terraced old-vine bottling. Both wines are from a core blue-slate section at the foot of the slope and nearby the ferry that he takes across the Mosel from his half-timbered home (built in 1663) to the vineyards each day.