The cellar at Weingut Günther Steinmetz. Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

A 17-year-old Günther Steinmetz made his first vintage in 1958, having taken over from his deceased father. He was one of the few winegrowers to domaine-bottle his wines in the village of Brauneberg in the 1950s. This was before the advent of cultured yeasts, laboratory analysis, and sterile filters (the latter not readily available to most winegrowers at the time and paramount for making the sweet, so-called “classic style” many Mosel Riesling fans love).

His 1958 Brauneberger Hasenläufer Riesling naturrein was fermented and matured naturally dry in Fuder, the traditional 1,000-liter barrels of the Mosel. Back in those days many of the old-vaulted cellars had chimneys to keep temperatures from dipping too low. The wild yeasts didn’t start or keep going if it were too cold. The fear among producers was re-fermentation in bottle, hence wines were usually fermented dry. Bottling occurred around May, and the wines tended to be circa 10-11% in alcohol. Today, Günther’s son, Stefan, bottles from this same plot of vines under the designation Brauneberger Juffer Riesling Devon. (Devon is named after the type of slate soils found along the Mosel from the Devonian Period.)

The German term naturrein meant the wine was non-chaptalized, or not “improved” by adding sugar to increase the alcohol and lower the acidity; Spätlese (late harvest) had little to do with today’s style, merely the time of harvesting. Hasenläufer (Hare Runner) was an old place-name, at the foot of the Brauneberger hillside, below the monopole Kammer higher up. As with many hillside vineyards, it lies on the other side of the Mosel from the village it’s named after. (On old maps Brauneberg was formerly called Dusemond.)

The 1971 German Wine Law rationalized many of these former place-names by grouping them together into legally defined single vineyards. For example, what is today Brauneberger Juffer consisted of several different sites, such as Hasenläufer and Falkenberg among others. Except for Kammer and Juffer-Sonnenuhr, the names have all but disappeared and became part of the enlarged Juffer, which itself was once only a particular site on the famed Braueberger hillside. The same occurred throughout the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. A couple of our winegrowers, such as Clemens Busch or Florian Lauer, still use (illegally) some original pre-1971 site names to differentiate among wines and their specific nuances.

Tags: 1971 German Wine Law, Brauneberger Hasenläufer, Brauneberger Juffer, Devon, Fuder, Günther Steinmetz, Stefan Steinmetz, naturrein

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