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.

You’ll have to wait until the Director’s Cut is released on DVD to learn exactly where in the vineyard Ulli’s 87-year-old father maintains his underground stash of Palmberg bottles.

Ulli standing in front of a barrel of 2008 Palmberg trocken. Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

In the 2008 vintage, for the first time in several years, Ulli Stein made a legally dry, rather than off-dry, Spätlese from his 40- to 100-year-old vines in Palmberg-Terrassen. Harvested on November 7 and 8, the Steins put the ripe, non-destemmed grape bunches into a crusher followed by a cool 16-hour pre-fermentation maceration. After a gentle pneumatic pressing followed by natural sedimentation in tank, the juice went into two old barrels, where fermentation started spontaneously. The wines were left on their gross lees in Fuder until bottling. For those looking for an analysis, 2008 St. Aldegunder Palmberg-Terrassen Spätlese trocken has 96° Oechsle,  12.1% alcohol by volume, 8.6 grams per liter acidity, and 8 grams per liter residual sugar.

Ulli Stein would be the first to admit that vineyards such as the imposing Winninger Uhlen or the renowned Wehlener Sonnenuhr are historically nobler in rank than the unsung St. Aldegunder Palmberg-Terrassen. Notwithstanding, he has shown over the years that his beloved Palmberg makes for more expressive wines than many famous sites along the Mosel. Even some more highly touted sites that Ulli works are not without their complications. For instance, the neighboring Bremmer Calmont, the steepest vineyard in Europe, suffers now from a lack of water in hot years—because of climate change, so do many top vineyards—but this remains a relative non-issue for the sheltered, less drought-prone Palmberg-Terrassen. With sufficient water at the top of the slope, Palmberg’s grapes tend to be more vigorous and can hang longer on the vines, so that, even with comparable Oechsle levels, the grapes and resulting wines from Palmberg normally have 2 g/l acidity more than those from Calmont. (In 2008, Ulli decided against bottling his dry Riesling from Calmont as Spätlese even though the grapes were ripe enough to qualify, because he felt the wine lacked the necessary definition and quality for this Prädikat. Unlike the VDP-labeling trend towards Grosses Gewächs and away from the use of Prädikat designations for dry Riesling, Ulli continues to label his top dry wines as “Spätlese trocken.” This, of course, is a topic for another post.)

When traveling down the Lower Mosel to Koblenz, even before reaching the grand single vineyards (Uhlen, Hamm, and Röttgen) of Winningen, many sites seem more striking than Palmberg-Terrassen. Yet once in the idyllic, steep-terraced Palmberg, it becomes apparent how special this site really is. (“Palm” is patois for Buchsbaum, boxwood, a shrub prevalent around the Mediterranean that also grows on this hillside.) Besides the 35- to 90-year-old vines rooted deep in weathered blue and gray slate, this side-valley vineyard is protected from the north and east winds, and, as mentioned earlier, has adequate water from a spring situated above, which supplies even in dry years the greater part of the vineyard with enough water.

After the Second World War, when others ignored its promise, Ulli’s father re-cultivated what had become largely wild terrain. He pruned old vines, planted new ones, repaired drywall terraces, cleared small sections and planted anew, put in fresh wooden stakes, and removed hedges. Over the decades he and Ulli have treated it as a kind of vineyard-garden hybird (at his house, Ulli’s 87-year-old dad has a truly amazing garden), and even now it reflects a gardener’s exacting, loving attention to detail and beauty. In fact, Ulli’s dad has a mini-terraced shrine within Palmberg and, behind a shed nearby, a secret hiding place in the ground to keep bottles of Palmberg readily chilled for drinking. He still consumes a bottle a day at his ripe old age.

Of course, there are so many other unheralded vineyards, jutting up from the Mosel or running along side valleys, including some in the nearby village of Zell, a source we think of only for cheap brand wines like Zeller Schwarze Katz. Zell’s “problem” is that it has lacked a great winemaker to match the potential greatness of its vineyards, the same for the area around Burg, where both the hillside setting and the bridge-crossing further downstream is reminiscent of Wehlen. Who knows this section of the Mosel? Or better yet: which winemaker will have the ambition (and the capital) to attempt to make something special from these sites? Wolfer Goldgrube is as impressive as many an oxbow on the Mosel, and only has regained some of its former acclaim in the last several years because of Daniel Vollenweider’s intensive efforts to rejuvenate both its vines and its reputation. How many so-called Mosel wine experts recognize the name Trarbacher Hühnerberg, now farmed primarily by the traditionalist Martin Müllen? It’s located along the Kautenbach, one of the many tributaries (Saar, Olewiger Bach, Ruwer, and Dhron among others) running through the Hunsrück, and was also a highly-ranked vineyard in the nineteenth century.

All this speaks to the difficulty of trying to classify vineyards. Palmberg-Terrassen, despite being modestly tucked behind the village of St. Aldegund, is in its best sections an ideal spot to grow Riesling. In addition, almost all the vines, which are trained in the traditional manner on wooden stakes, are ungrafted, on average 70 years old, and well-kept on steep, terraced, stony-slate soils. (Click on this winter photo to get a better idea.)

Many of the famous Middle Mosel sites have been restructured (Flurbereinigung) to make them more economical to work and then replanted (usually wire-trained) with clones. Fortunately, there are winegrowers who seek out old vines in steep, often terraced, vineyards that can only be worked by hand with vines trained on wooden stakes. Clemens Busch continues to reclaim some of the best and steepest sites within Pündericher Marienburg, notably in Rothenpfad and Falkenlay. Florian Lauer (Weingut Peter Lauer) has saved a terraced plot of old vines on the top of a cliff in the forgotten Schonfels, and Andreas Adam (Weingut A.J. Adam) has acquired a well-situated, terraced parcel in Goldtröpfchen. Few winegrowers want to work such sites, because it doesn’t pay. The steepest sections of the well-known Saarburger Rausch, those further west and lower down the slope, lie fallow; it is the higher, flatter area that has been renewed and can be worked more easily by tractor.

Since the 1940s, Ulli’s father and later Ulli have only been replanting non-grafted vines from their own cuttings via sélection massale (mass selection)—the old, traditional method. And they didn’t evaluate the grape quality of those vines merely based on their grapes’ sugar levels or plumpness, but rather they propagated those that fulfilled the following criteria (here the sequence in order of importance):

• Small, loose grape bunches with tiny berries of which 20 to 80 percent include millerandage, i.e., plenty of small, seedless berries, with a high skin-to-juice ratio, and a high concentration of acidity, aroma, and sugar.
• Healthy grapes with no stem disease, no fungus, and little rot, when then “noble rot.”
• Yellow to brown berries, with brown spots like freckles.

The old vines were evaluated over many years, before and during the harvest, and correspondingly tagged. Vines that are tagged 22 to 25 times within 25 years have been used for propagation. “This means that our Riesling vines are our own ‘clones,’ namely selected material with, as much as possible, uniform genetic potential, only we have applied entirely different criteria than by the modern Geisenheimer, Neustädter, and other Riesling clones, which were only selected for yield and fruit ripeness,” explained Ulli.

Even if he acquires new plots with dormant old vines, Ulli only replaces them if they no longer yield fruit or are attacked by disease, such as esca, and he does so one at a time, rather than grubbing up an entire section of old vines.

Looking at Palmberg-Terrassen, with its nooks and crannies among the numerous dry-wall terraces on predominantly blue-gray slate, it becomes apparent how complex researching just one singular site can be. For instance, the original Aldegunder Palmberg—no “St.” or “-Terrassen” (terraces) attached to the name back then—was a smaller site and had different boundaries in the past.

Ulli writes, “amongst other things, the 1971 German Wine Law destroyed both the diversity of single vineyards and their historic individuality, cultivated for centuries. The merging of smaller, individual sites into larger vineyards was supposed to simplifiy things for the ‘consumer.’ Instead, it served the Großkellereien [large bulk producers], which could buy more wine from one (persumably more familiar) expanded site and could use the best site names also for flatland vineyards now legally incorporated under that name. Palmberg-Terrassen was similarly enlarged, but included only steep slate slopes and the damage was not nearly as bad as elsewhere.”

Since 1971, St. Aldegunder Palmberg-Terrassen incorporates three former place-names:

• Palmberg. The western and main part of the steep slope, south facing. (Certain sections, especially the western edge and highest terraces, have been overgrown with shrubs since the 1960s. )
• Hötlay. The impressive terraced knoll, jutting out east of Palmberg, also south facing.
• Rosenberg. An east-facing climat around the bend. (Ulli doesn’t consider this section to be a part of Palmberg-Terrassen. On the panoramic photo, it cannot be seen and almost 95 percent now lies fallow.)

Formerly, the three sites totaled around 20 hectares (49.4 acres), only 4 hectares (!) of which are now planted with vines. Of these 4 hectares, 1 hectare is in the “original” Palmberg and 3 hectares in Hötlay. The Steins have sole ownership (a quasi monopole) of the original Palmberg and own 0.3 hectares and rent another 0.5 hectares in the former Hötlay, meaning that their 1.8 total hectares represent 45% ownership of the post-1971 Palmberg-Terrassen.

Matthias Knebel in his cellar in the village of Winningen. Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

At Weingut Reinhard & Beate Knebel the main harvest is winding down. The average must weights this past week were around 95° Oechsle. For example, their old-vine parcel in Sternberg, a former site within today’s Winninger Brückstück, had 104° Oechsle.

As an aside, according to Joachim Krieger’s Terrassenkultur an der Untermosel, the highly-esteemed and original Brückstück vineyard became part of Röttgen in 1912. In turn, the authorities re-named the neighboring “Im Geisen” with the name Brückstück. As if this were not confusing enough, in 1971, the newly-designated Brückstück (i.e., “Im Geisen”) also became part of Röttgen. So, today’s Brückstück is mainly the well-situated Sternberg, a reputable, old-named section of a steep hillside with terraces that adjoins the enlarged Röttgen’s. In other words, the authorites expanded Röttgen to the south, towards the village of Winningen, and this comprises both the original Brückstück and Im Geisen vineyards.

Getting back to the harvest, Matthias Knebel, who has taken over more of the winemaking at the domaine, had this to say about the vintage:

In order to clarify one thing first: we’re very pleased with the harvest. Even if yields are described everywhere as being very low, we should nevertheless be happy about the quality of the grapes. It was reported that rot was prevalent in many areas, and one has to say that there was no bad rot—neither sour rot nor acetification. The grapes possessed from the outset of the harvest marked aromatics. The musts all tasted remarkably fruity, and those from the partly drier parcels have herbal aromas. All in all, it looks like fruitier and, again, somewhat robuster wines than 2008. We’ll have to wait and see. We’ve done our job, now the [wild] yeasts are doing theirs!

Ulli Stein in his cellar in the village of Bullay. Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

This might look and feel like a repeat of the last post, but it’s not. Even the photo of Ulli Stein before his 30-hl barrel is different. Anyway, the weather here has been just fantastic over the last couple of weeks with plenty of sunshine and cool weather. The main Riesling harvest has been underway.

Ulli explained:

Until the beginning of this week (with the exception of Himmelreich), we were still in pre-selection mode and harvested very good quality, amongst others Blauschiefer with 85° Oechsle and 9.3 g/l acidity—ideal. In Himmelreich, we purposely picked Kabinett and thereby picked once again an elegant “light style” by a combination of two harvest dates (October 14 and 21) with 80° and 86° Oechsle and 9.8 and 9.0 g/l acidity, respectively. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we harvested in Hölle and Klosterkammer wonderful grapes with 98° and 100° Oechsle and 9.5 and 9.0 g/l acidity, respectively. With Pinot Noir, we were finished by Oct. 15, totally healthy and 102° Oechsle. At the moment I am paying close attention to the acidity and will plan the rest of the harvest according to that. In Calmont, we’re done, an elegant Qualitätswein with 88° and a Spätlese with 97° Oechsle, but only 8.2 g/l acidity. We’ll have to give the latter a little Palmberg for support. The grapes are unbelievable and still hanging in Palmberg after the pre-selection: golden-yellow, healthy with a little noble rot, physiologically ripe and with a still racy acidity of 9.0 to 9.5 g/l. In Himmelreich, half the grapes of a similar quality are still hanging for vin de paille. In this year, Palmberg shows, for example, in comparison to Calmont or [Neefer] Frauenberg its absolute singularity and superiority—the old vines dig deep and have from the water source above [the vineyard] no water stress. In Calmont and Frauenberg, it was once again too dry. All in all, it’s been a grandiose autumn, and I’ll proceed in the cellar accordingly.

Ulli Stein in his cellar. Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

After having beautiful autumn weather in September and early October, the last few days have been rainy here in Trier. Although today it warmed up some with no rain. The main Riesling harvest has yet to begin. Most grapes will be picked over the next several weeks, however.

At Weingut Stein, Ulli wrote:

As late as yesterday [Sunday] the weather was fantastic, and the grapes ripened accordingly. Last week we did a complete pre-selection [a first passage through certain single vineyards] of Riesling grape bunches in Hölle, Klosterkammer, and Himmelreich. (Everything that was not optimal was cut from the vines.) Must weights were between 82° and 85° Oechsle. The grapes taste really good and will go in our table wine or in Blauschiefer. On Saturday, we picked the first Pinot Noir in Himmelreich with a good physiological ripeness and 102° Oechsle. Unfortunately, it’s supposed to rain in the next three days, still not a disaster, but increased risks of rot. We have to keep—and that is already foreseeable—a watchful eye on the acidity. Until now the grape ripening is similar to 2007, but it can quickly go in the direction of 2006  [i.e., with high levels of botrytis]. We’re going to harvest Pinot Noir in the coming weeks and then in Himmelreich and Palmberg those physiologically ripe and crisp Riesling grapes that don’t have Oechsle levels too high for the racy and lean Kabinett trocken and feinherb. All in all, I’m still very pleased and also optimistic.

Please note the following MWM tasting events, if you happen to be in NYC:

On Saturday, October 10, from 4 to 7pm, my colleague, Dan Melia, will be pouring 10 of our selections at Chambers Street Wines.

On the following Thursday, October 15, from 5:30 to 7:30pm, Crush Wine & Spirits will be hosting a big 2008 German Vintage Tasting, which includes a line-up of 27 wines, including nine from our portfolio. Join Dan as he pours our selections alongside other top wines from Germany.

On Saturday, I visited Weingut Reinhard & Beate Knebel to taste their newly bottled 2008 vintage. The elegant two-day presentation took place—as in every year—over Pentecost (a major European holiday weekend), and the sky-blue weather played along, at least on the first day. Gernot Kollmann, who consults and makes the wines alongside Beate, offered me a ride from Trier to Winningen, so we had a chance to talk and then arrived early to open and taste the wines before the festivities officially began.

The big news at Knebel is that Beate’s youngest son, Matthias, has decided to work full-time at the domaine since finishing his viticulture studies in Geisenheim. He’ll help with the vineyard, cellar, and management workload and bring his perspective and point of view to the Knebel tradition—one that carries enormous meaning for him. He has already played an increasingly important role over the past year, accompanying me to wine-tasting events in Paris and NYC and emerging as the public face of the domaine.

In addition, after long deliberation, the Knebels have decided to redesign their label, putting the cursive script on a back label, keeping their coat of arms, highlighting the family name, and drawing the reader’s eye more deliberately to site and (when appropriate) Prädikat.

I had already traveled twice to Knebel recently to taste some barrel and tank samples: once with Stephen Bitterolf of NYC’s Crush Wine & Spirits and then again with my colleague Dan Melia and Rubén Sanz Ramiro, former wine steward at the NYC’s Monday Room. On Stephen’s visit, Matthias took us on a short hike up the drywall terraces of the Röttgen vineyard. Knebel’s vines in these plots, as with Ulli Stein’s vineyards, are mostly trained on wooden stakes, with one cane per vine, and also tied down by willow. The slate, to quote Stephen, looked more like “slate bricks” in this sector of the Röttgen. Matthias also made a quick stop for us at Heymann-Löwenstein, and Reinhard Löwenstein kindly gave us some samples to take along. The next week Matthias took Dan, Ruben, and me on a (death-defying) monorail ride up the imposing Uhlen after we had tasted some tank samples with Gernot in the cellar.

True to the 2008 vintage, the wines have lower alcohol—a welcome change—than the previous few years. In fact, I was able to re-taste certain 2007s alongside their 2008 counterparts, such as Von den Terrassen Riesling trocken from both vintages. The 2008 is lighter, with only 11.5% alcohol, whereas 2007 is just now starting to open up and reveal itself. The 2008 Riesling trocken von den Terrassen was partly fermented and aged in a large, used acacian barrel from South Tyrol. Moreover, I was also deeply impressed by the 2008 Röttgen Spätlese trocken. Gernot feels that early on it had more aromatics than the typically austere and masculine Uhlen Spätlese trocken, which also needs more time in bottle. I also liked the feinherb wines from the overlooked sites of Hamm and Brückstück. Spätlesen and Auslesen with more noticeable residual sugar and Beate’s dessert wines, though all in small quantities in 2008, were pure and very good.

To celebrate this first presentation day, I was invited with other guests to a special dinner in Koblenz that paired various dishes to Knebels’ wines, including 2006 Röttgen and Uhlen BA magnums at the end.

Rows of vines at St. Aldegunder Himmelreich. Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

Ulli Stein has purchased as well as rented an additional 0.25 hectares (0.62 acres) in St. Aldegunder Himmelreich. Weingut Stein now has a total of 0.5 hectares (1.24 acres) here. When we talked earlier this week, he was putting in new wooden stakes and pruning the vines in these plots. His holdings cover the entire (pre-1971 German Wine Law) Himmelreich, quasi a monopole. The terraced site has a stony blue-slate soil with an easterly exposition. The nearby damn creates a warmer micro climate, and the vineyard gets the sun early in the day that helps dry the morning dew and keep the grapes healthy and free from rot. All the vines in the original Himmelreich are ungrafted, averaging 70 years old. His core plot has over 100-year-old vines, the oldest in St. Aldegund. Since 1971, Himmelreich also incorporates the neighboring old place-name called Lay.

One of Ulli’s newly acquired parcels was planted with clones, but the former owner was unhappy with the results and ripped them out back in the 1950s for non-grafted vines (i.e., on original European rootstock). Ulli said the ungrafted vines develop physiological ripeness at lower must weights than clones would at a similar ripeness level. He likes to make from Himmelreich a delicate Kabinett trocken or feinherb and the rest goes into his Estate wine called Blauschiefer (blue slate). The majority of his Pinot Noir vines are planted in the aforementioned Lay, further upstream.

Both the 2008 Palmberg Spätlese and Himmelreich Kabinett will be under 9 grams per liter residual sugar (RS), hence officially dry. He recently racked the two Fuder of Himmelreich Kabinett from the lees and the analysis showed 9.7% alcohol by volume, 6 g/l RS, and 8.3 g/l acidity—a dry-fermented Mosel Riesling under 10% alcohol!

Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

A trail winds mid slope in the steep Palmberg-Terrassen behind the village of St. Aldegund. The old ungrafted vines are trained in the traditional manner on wooden stakes. The 2008 St. Aldegunder Palmberg-Terrassen Riesling Spätlese trocken is still fermenting in two old barrels. Meanwhile, you can taste Stein’s 2007 feinherb edition.

Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

Ulli Stein standing at his beloved St. Aldegunder Palmberg-Terrassen. The name of this steep-terraced site with gray and blue slate comes from the boxwood plant that is prevalent in the Mediterranean, but also grows on this hill. “Palm” is patois for Buchsbaum (boxwood), not palm tree. See Joe Salamone’s write-up on Ulli and his favorite site.

Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

A Fuder of 2008 St. Aldegunder Himmelreich Riesling Kabinett trocken at Weingut Stein. This wine comes from non-grafted old vines in the original plot of Himmelreich in St. Aldegund and ferments spontaneously on its lees.

Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

On a wintry Saturday afternoon Ulli, Tobias, Sebastian, and I hiked up Bremmer Calmont, one of the steepest vineyards in Europe.

Today, Gernot Kollmann, cellar master at Weingut Reinhard & Beate Knebel, told me that the 2008s have lower must weights than the past three vintages, so alcohol levels will be relatively low across the board. This will be a welcome relief for those seeking tamer wines for early and easy drinking. For example, von den Terrassen Riesling trocken will have no more than 12%, probably closer to 11% alcohol. He did on average no more than 5 to 6 hours of skin contact after a light crushing. Extract levels are good from the rain during the summer. So, the wines will have good depth and complexity. Acidity was high, and the extra hang time was good for getting it lower. Ripeness levels, however, stayed more or less the same. Gray rot was less a problem this vintage (unlike in 2000), but botrytis didn’t concentrate the grapes enough to get a lot of wines with noble rot. On the contrary, the autumnal season resulted in stagnating must weights. Sorting at the vine and in the cellar was important. The dry Riesling Spätlese from Uhlen or Röttgen will be scarce in 2008. Gernot felt the grapes in Röttgen had more aromatics this year, but it’s still too early to tell. A batch of Uhlen reached 98° Oechsle. There will be more entry-level than high-end wines.

At the moment I’m updating and reworking the catalog for 2009.