A view of the steep Calmont vineyard to the left with the villages of Eller and Ediger-Eller in the background.

After reading David Schildknecht’s 2009 vintage profile on Beaujolais, the following passage reminded me of similar problems facing grape-growers in the Mosel region.

It is by now commonplace that Beaujolais is a region in crisis; and the ramifications of so many thousands of small growers increasingly hard-pressed to obtain for their fruit a price that pays them to continue farming—much less farm with an eye toward quality or respect for the land’s sustenance—are indeed dire. This situation will not be turned around anytime soon, nor will it be turned around without a significant loss of total vineyard acreage, bound to include ancient vines on steep but potentially excellent sites. Still, there is hope for this region provided that those growers who are setting an example of diligent stewardship of their terroir and offering distinctively delicious variations on a grape that has only ever risen to distinction in this one, incomparable landscape, are able to command prices that will reward low yields; the nursing of old vines; the back-aching labor of steep slope viticulture; hand-harvesting; and immaculate, imaginative, and attentive vinification. And this hope is of course in our hands, fellow wine lovers. Whether you think you outgrew Beaujolais years ago; whether one or another producer whose wines you tasted in recent years did not inspire you; or even if you never evinced any interest in Beaujolais at all, do please take the 2009 vintage as an opportunity to explore a small range of the wines that I’ve recommended, so that you can at least say from experience what it is that you and those who drink at your table have been missing.

In spite of the loss of precious old Gamay and Riesling vines and the plonk sold as Beaujolais and Mosel by either large bottling companies or poor quality producers, some growers continue to fight on to save old vines and to uphold the best traditions for making top wines. Marcel Lapierre is one of the first names to come to mind in the Beaujolais. His Morgon bottlings are pure and true.

The legendary American importer Frank Schoonmaker once wrote: “In many ways the Mosels are the German white counterparts of Beaujolais.” He was referring, of course, to their charm in youth—fragrance, effervescence, lightness, and fruitiness.

The northern Rhône has much in common with the Mosel too: Roman history, steep slope viticulture, and small farmer-growers with diverse, spread-out parcels. Both are rugged regions—flanked by rustic hill country, such as the Ardèche and Eifel, respectively—and the hillside vineyard work is back-breaking. Syrah in granite, like Riesling in slate, gives the wines their structure and breed.

Many connoisseurs would argue, however, that red Burgundy is more akin to Mosel Riesling, because of their reputation for making some of the finest wines. In addition, the monks played in each region an important role over the centuries as did Napoleon later on. Yet, unlike Burgundy, the Mosel is less sought-after by buyers and collectors nowadays than over a century ago, unless it’s famous names such as Joh. Jos. Prüm or Egon Müller-Scharzhof.

By the way, Bert Celce’s write-up on Cornas vintner Thierry Allemand, a favorite of mine alongside Gonon in St. Joseph, looks at the terrain of his various sites and the hard work involved farming them. The shot of Allemand’s Reynards, in particular, is reminiscent of Stein’s Palmberg, each tucked in a side valley with steep terraces.

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.

In the current issue of The Art of Eating (no. 84 “The State of Pork”), 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.

It’s not about the brunette, whom Lyu Hanabusa shot for Mark Williamson’s Willi’s Wine Bar vintage 1993 poster, but rather an observation about skin contact (or, pre-fermentation maceration) for Mosel Riesling. Admittedly, this is another geek posting about a technique (Maischestandzeit) that has so many facets and will only be covered here on a superficial level, but deserves a closer look.

It’s common practice in the region, especially for sweet wines, with botrytis-affected grape bunches, to be pressed without any maceration. Many producers in their sixties or seventies always did it this way. Some critics argue that skin contact (click on our glossary and scroll down for the definition) has become à la mode on the Mosel. And surely, they’re right that some wine-makers are following a trend here. Yet, macerating Mosel Riesling before pressing is a traditional method of handling the grapes before fermentation begins in order to extract from the grape skins aromas, phenols, and potassium, the latter helping to buffer acidity. Obviously, many wine-makers, especially those focusing on high-residual-sugar wines, handle their grapes differently, that is but putting them directly in the press with or without crushing the grapes beforehand, and if crushed, then without maceration.

Looking at some old archive photos of the Mosel Valley in Karl-Josef Gilles’s Das Moseltal Zwischen Koblenz und Trier 1920-1950, crushers are shown placed on top of open-wooden vats that were carried on horse- or ox-drawn wagons at the foot of steep hillside vineyards and then the crushed grapes were brought back to the winery for pressing. The grapes often macerated an entire day or even longer on their skins, pips, and juice. The winegrowers would then fork the grapes into a wooden-basket press. These old-style presses gave fine, clear juice, which was further exposed to air before running down into the barrel cellar below. Today’s pre-fermentation maceration with must oxidation, as practiced by Clemens Busch, reproduces these time-honored methods. Certainly, in the old days some winegrowers crushed and macerated purely as a means to get more grapes into the wooden vats and to avoid having to go back to the winery. Others consciously sought out to extract from the skins more aromas and phenols.

Just as skin contact is used to increase phenolics, whole-bunch pressing has become popular among producers in other regions to decrease them. Both Olivier Zind-Humbrecht and Jean-Marie Deiss told us on our visit to Alsace last summer that they prefer to handle their grapes as gently as possible by direct (pneumatic) pressing, no crushing or macerating beforehand. This probably has some to do with the climate being warmer and the wines naturally more opulent.

At Markus Molitor and Van Volxem (two large, flagship estates on the Mosel and Saar, respectively) extended hang times and skin contact are preferred and both have invested in modern Swiss-made, stainless-steel basket presses. Van Volxem also likes to offset any bitterness resulting from phenols extracted during prolonged skin contact by micro-oxygenating the must, but not the wine. The results at both estates speak for themselves.

Ulli Stein explained that maceration is a complex theme that needs to take into account different factors such as wine style, grape variety, climate, health of the grapes, ripeness levels, acidity, and so on. Generally speaking, he feels that skin contact on the Mosel increases the complexity of the later wine, but decreases its elegance. It’s a fine balancing act and only pertains to healthy, high-quality grapes. Less healthy grapes, in his opinion, should either be crushed and pressed or direct-pressed. For healthy grapes to be macerated, he considers three main factors: grape acidity and quality as well as the sought-after wine style.

In a high-acid vintage, and for progressively higher ripeness levels, he does longer macerations. For example, his 2008 Palmberg Spätlese trocken was 14 hours on the skins; whereas, the less ripe 2008 Himmelreicht Kabinett trocken only 4 hours. And the opposite is true for riper years and lower quality wines, i.e., less maceration. He also feels it’s better to macerate at cooler temperatures to avoid excessive extraction of phenols. As a rough guideline, he points out that one hour of maceration reduces acidity by 0.1 grams per liter and increases the danger of the wine later going through malolactic fermentation either during or after the end of the alcoholic fermentation. For ripe grapes, he recommends macerating with the stems. Otherwise, it makes sense to destem. In Alsace or Chablis, he feels the wines already have enough opulence, but less acidity and delicacy. That’s why they often avoid doing skin contact, instead preferring more elegance at the cost of fullness, which is in their wines already plentiful to begin with. They don’t need extra oxidation measures to reduce it.

Last November I tasted and compared Weingut Günther Steinmetz’s 2008 Riesling (a special Triage Wines’ bottling) and 2008 Mülheimer Sonnenlay Riesling Spätlese trocken “Alte Reben.” Although the latter showed more grip and substance from “old vines,” the extended 36-hour skin contact didn’t make it—as some might presume—rich, oxidized, or overly extracted. And both held up beautifully over several days in the fridge and are excellent examples of naturally low-alcohol, dry-tasting Middle Mosel Riesling. Even if the grapes for the 2008 Riesling were crushed and then direct pressed without skin contact, it still has a good depth of flavor and clocks in at a mere 10% alcohol by volume. The old-vine Spätlese is only a degree higher, at 11% alcohol, and also has a light color and bright acidity despite the long skin contact.

Why does Stefan Steinmetz then choose to do skin contact on the one wine, but not for the other? For his 2008 Estate Riesling (Triage Wines), the grape bunches were harvested en bloc and included grapes that were affected with botrytis. He wants to avoid macerating these grapes, which could give off-flavors. His old-vine Spätlese from the Sonnenlay vineyard consists, on the other hand, only of healthy and ripe grapes, because the botrytis-affected bunches were harvested beforehand. In other words, there was a pre-selection in this site.

Stefan has several reasons for doing skin contact for his top dry-tasting wines: (1) reducing acidity with higher mineral components; (2) lessening the danger of atypical aging taint by extracting Caffeic acidity; (3) increasing the aromatics; (4) extracting more flavor, glaze (schmelz), and volume; (5) getting the ripe tannins; and (6) following a tradition on the Mosel, because the pH levels are low, i.e., the wines have higher acidity and more resistance to microbiological spoilage.

Direct-pressed grapes on the Mosel will rarely result in a wine having the same structure than ones that have had some maceration. Many producers avoid pre-fermentation maceration, even for dry Riesling. Erich Weber at Hofgut Falkenstein exclusively ferments with wild yeasts in Fuder, and the wines, mostly dry, are slowly squeezed without crushing in a spindle press. Even though he’s less in favor of skin contact, the wines are gently pressed for three to five hours that includes some maceration. With his richer soils and crisp, taut style, he’s less keen on breadth in his wines.

At Weingut Peter Lauer on the Saar, Florian Lauer has, as most producers, a pneumatic press. His is an Italian-made Defrancheschi, and he likes to do whole-bunch pressing, as well, with some maceration inside the press, depending on the wine in question. He also treads the harvested grapes before pressing. Ulli Stein, whose style is for dry, light-bodied Mosel Riesling, does after gentle crushing a cool maceration before pneumatic pressing. In a throwback style, Martin Müllen, in Traben-Trarbach, likes to do a gentle crushing—without destalking—followed by putting the grapes into an old basket press and then into barrels. Each winegrower has their own approach.

As with all aspects of wine-growing and -making, it depends on the producer and the style of wine to be made. Many factors play a role in determining if it makes sense to do skin contact and what the end results will be.

In spring fever for Mosel Riesling, wine critic Eric Asimov of the The New York Times and a tasting panel judged 20 Kabinett wines from the 2008 vintage. Their top choice was from A.J. Adam. As good as the Hofberg Riesling Kabinett is—and we do like the wines from Andreas Adam, too—what has been lost in the article and corresponding blog post is a broader explanation of the term Kabinett. It’s usually been assumed by many German wine lovers, especially in the States, to be (when well made, of course) a delicate sweet wine with a wonderful balance between fruit and acidity, almost coming off as drier than it really is, especially in certain vintages with sufficient acidity and some bottle age. Yet, this is only one of the styles of Kabinett, there are also Kabinett trocken (dry) and halbtrocken/feinherb (off-dry) that deserve more recognition abroad and can be just as fine and delicate as their sweeter counterparts, even if the trend among producers nowadays is to downgrade their Spätlese trocken as Kabinett trocken or to entirely rename their dry-tasting Rieslings without a Prädikat designation.

Besides top famous estates such as Joh. Jos. Prüm or Schloss Lieser, and ignoring the tasting panel results for a moment, there are a number of other fruity Mosel Riesling Kabinett wines worthy of mention from the ’08 vintage, among them Enkircher Ellergrub from Weiser-Künstler, Ürziger Würzgarten from Jos. Christoffel jr., and Scharzhofberger from Egon Müller, who has various bottlings of Kabinett, even though some critics feel the real quality starts at Spätlese for this renowned Saar estate. It’s also worth noting that all the above producers specialize in sweeter-style Riesling.

Earlier this month at a dinner, Carl von Schubert, owner of the prestigious Maximin Grünhaus in the Ruwer Valley, explained that residual sugar levels for Riesling Kabinett have increased significantly over the last three decades from about 20 to 30 grams per liter residual sugar (equivalent to today’s Riesling Kabinett feinherb) to well over 60 or more. Put differently, sweetness (not just ripeness) levels have risen, often impressing certain critics and drinkers alike. He was only referring to the so-called “classic” fruity-sweet Kabinett—when the wine-maker purposely stops the fermentation, usually by temperature control and sulfur, to leave a certain level of sugar in the finished wine. Von Schubert has always made, alongside his sweet wines, traditional light-bodied dry and off-dry Rieslings (including Kabinett), which happen to represent the majority of his production, similar to Stein in our portfolio. For example, Ulli Stein likes to make from his 100-year-old vines in St. Aldegunder Himmelreich both Riesling Kabinett trocken and feinherb bottlings. The grapes from these old ungrafted vines in this stony, east-facing plot fully ripen at lower must weights than clones do and are ideal for Kabinett. He neither makes a fruity-sweet Kabinett nor a dry Spätlese from this site, rather a true dry Mosel Kabinett as he sees it.

Before the 1971 German Wine Law was enacted, unchaptalized wines were simply labeled naturrein (“naturally pure”). These were often fermented until they stopped on their own towards dry or off-dry. Unlike Spätlese, which would have some discreet sweetness (pre-sterile filter) and was redefined under the 1971 Wine Law, the Prädikat termed “Kabinett” was a new designation altogether and has since become synonymous in export markets, in particular, for delicately sweet, low-alcohol Mosel Riesling à la Joh. Jos. Prüm or Fritz Haag. With 10 years or more bottle age, good examples of this now-classic style come across less sweet and can show wonderful balance. The old term Cabinet, which originated in the Rheingau, had no relation and meant instead a special reserve bottling. For example, in the late eighteenth century Schloss Johannisberg bottled “Cabinet” wines that were nobly sweet.

The 1971 Wine Law and subsequent amendments created today’s Prädikat system by linking specific minimum ripeness levels of the grapes at harvest to different terms: Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese, and Eiswein. Kabinett has the lowest ripeness level (73° Oechsle on the Mosel) and, as mentioned above, can be fermented dry, off-dry, or sweet. In other words, two scales exist: one indicating ripeness of the grapes at harvest, and the other measuring the residual sugar in the finished wine. This was the case from the outset of the ‘71 Wine Law, that is German wine-makers could produce Kabinett trocken and halbtrocken (or feinherb) as well as those with more noticeable residual sugar. In any of its variations, it’s meant to be lighter than a Spätlese from the same producer and vintage, for the grapes were picked earlier. Because there is no maximum Oechsle or alcohol level, most Riesling Kabinette are actually (declassified) Spätlesen or Auslesen in must weight. Producers frequently want to impress journalists this way. In addition, with climate change, some recent vintages have had extreme ripeness levels early on, which results in both higher must weights and sweetness levels. So much depends on the yields, the time of picking, and the physiological ripeness of the grapes. Furthermore, the trend at the moment, especially among the elite winegrowers’ association, called the VDP, is to phase out the terms trocken and halbtrocken for Riesling Kabinett, Spätlese, and the seldomly used Auslese (trocken) in favor of a Gutswein/Gutsriesling (Estate wine), an Ortswein (village wine), and a Grosses Gewächs (grand cru), somewhat following the system in Burgundy. Although much of the VDP’s reasoning makes sense (disregarding the elitist tendencies), it brings with it all sorts of other complications.

Lastly, some critics have argued that dry Mosel Rieslings, especially Kabinett, taste shrill and the only good examples have sweetness. An importer even wrote that Germans like to drink Sprüdel (sparkling water), hence their proclivity for dry, insipid wines. It’s similar to those that say great dry German Riesling only comes from Rheinhessen or Pfalz, but not from the Mosel. As with sweet wines, there are certainly plenty of poorly made dry Mosel Riesling, whether tart, bitter, or clumsy. In regard to preferences, many locals favor the sweeter styles, especially Kabinett, but the French also lean more towards drinking dry wines, an experience we know firsthand from our portfolio tasting events in Paris over the last several years. And the best dry wines from the Mosel measure up against any region in Germany and beyond.

Last week, the Bernkasteler Ring and the Grosser Ring had their yearly auctions. At the former, 2006 Knebel Winninger Röttgen Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) received the second highest bid; whereas, at the VDP auction in Trier a day later Clemens Busch successfully auctioned his 2007 Pündericher Marienburg Riesling Auslese lange Goldkapsel (also in half bottles). Egon Müller-Scharzhof and Joh. Jos. Prüm received, however, the top prices for their rarities: a 1997 Scharzhofberger TBA and a 1959 Wehlener Sonnenuhr TBA, respectively. The latter was a lone bottle and the only one not sampled at the auction.

Besides touring the Ruwer and Saar, I also had a chance beforehand to visit and taste at Busch, Stein, and Steinmetz’s as well as a few winegrowers outside our portfolio along the Mosel, including Weiser-Künstler and Vollenweider, both of whom are based in Traben-Trarbach. Yesterday, I tasted through the 2007 collection of Markus Molitor.

On Monday, September 22, we had our second annual Paris tasting at Mark Williamson’s Macéo Restaurant & Bar. Despite a small turnout this year, I was pleased with the quality of the guests who showed up to taste our selections. On the night before as well as after the tasting, the winegrowers and I got together for dinner—a good time to discuss matters and relax with some bottles of French wine before the upcoming harvest. The weather has been perfect till now: dry and cool; the forecast is for rain tomorrow.